Captain and Queen
by Elf Sternberg
Summary: Far from Earth, the Star Kingdom of Arendelle has survived. The world of Arendelle is cold and its politics torn with divisions, but its young queen is determined to see it thrive. When a starship with the promise of faster-than-light travel arrives, it and its Captain awaken an ancient threat. But it may be the Captain's heart and beauty that truly changes Arendelle forever.
1. Chapter 1: Whispers

Whispers

Elsa turned away from the armorplast window to the woman who entered her office, pushing a service tray in front of her. Gerda had been her majordomo for as long as she could remember yet age seemed to barely bow the woman. Elsa had been a queen for only three years and already she felt the responsibilities of her office bent her toward breaking. "Gerda, thank you. The weather today looks beautiful. I can see the Elevator."

"Then your eyes are better than mine, My Queen," Gerda said. Elsa gratefully took the offered cup of tea. Once upon a time she might have added sugar and milk, and eagerly taken the biscuit Gerda always put on the side. Today, black and bitter felt just about right. Gerda watched and said, "I hope the tea helps. You seem so exhausted."

"I am," Elsa said. "Worn out." She gestured toward her temple, where her perfectly set hair seated the Crown of Arendelle. Her fingers brushed against it, she flinched, and withdrew the hand.

"I thought these were your friends."

Elsa contemplated the door where her eight most reliable dukes and duchesses had assembled to discuss a forthcoming All Duchies meeting. "Even my friend exhaust me." She glanced at the door and dreaded the moment when the Master of Chambers would ring a chime to resume the session.

Exhaustion was an old companion for Elsa, a result of the internal battle as she forced herself to assume the face and poise, the pose of a queen. She looked up at the painting hung to the right of her desk. Her parents peered down out of that painting toward her, smiling, benevolent. Her father had been so tall, so charismatic, so much in control. He had used the family power with grace and wisdom, with reserve and foresight. Her father had always shown great fortitude when dealing with those bickering men in the District Council. "I miss you," she whispered.

The other door opened and her secretary entered. A big man, given to smiling more than frowning, Kai had been her parent's secretary, and now he was hers. He wasn't smiling. "A problem?"

"More a matter of logistics, My Queen. Duke Meinard is asking for privilege, for his son, but you indicated Lady Guiliel should sit at your right hand for tonight's dinner."

Elsa let her brows knit together as she contemplated this reminder. She had promised Meinard's son a seat at her table, but that had been some time ago. Then again, her last dinner with any of her nobles had also been some time ago. She sighed. "Yes, I remember. Do I have to go?" Kai looked at her from under his eyebrows. "Fine. Tell Meinard his privilege is extended, this time. Give Meke my apologies, tell her I will see her at the ball afterward."

"I expected as much."

"Kai, if you knew what I was going to say, why did you even ask?" He gave her an old-fashioned look. "Fine. Do you need me to write it out?"

"If you would be so kind."

Elsa put down her tea and moved to pick up her pen. "You were there, Kai. Was the dance that brought my mother and father together this tedious and this clashing, all at once?"

Kai opened his mouth to answer when a rare buzzer went off at one corner of her desk. Kai leaned over the desk and pushed a button. The sharp features of her Captain of the Guard appeared on the embedded video panel. "Yes, Captain Calhoun?"

"Secretary Kai, is the Queen with you?"

"Right here, Captain," Elsa said.

"Your highness! Your highness, something... I..." Captain Tamora Jean Calhoun was the soul of professional calm, a woman for whom duty came before aught else. Elsa could not imagine anything that could possibly make her so flustered. If they were under attack, Calhoun would have been barking orders at her, where to go, who would take her, whom to trust. If they weren't, she wouldn't have called at all. "Your highness," she said, taking a deep breath. "A message has just come in to Arendelle Space Traffic Control, and... I think you should listen to it for yourself."

"Captain, if you feel that's necessary, please."

Calhoun touched something off-camera. "Arendelle Space Traffic Control," said someone Elsa had never heard before, someone with a sweet, confident voice that filled the room, "This is Captain Anna DuVar of the Royal Manticoran Navy Long Range Exploratory Cruiser _Winterkiss_. My ship is now twenty light-hours out from Arendelle space, although by the time you receive this we should be down to 14 hours. Since we don't know your procedures, we are formally requesting parking orbit instructions around Arendelle and formal contact with your government. Please be advised that my ship's drives require a cubical space approximately forty-two kilometers on a side to provide standard margins of safety. It looks to us that you have a great deal going on in low orbit, so a high orbit is acceptable and requested." The woman at the other end of the recording took a deep breath. "We're very glad to have found you, Arendelle. This message repeats. Arendelle Space Traffic Control... "

Elsa looked up sharply. Kai was staring at her. "A starship?" she said.

"That's what it looks like, Your Majesty," Calhoun said. "I don't know my stars from my bars, but the eggheads are saying this thing is real, they can see it on their telescopes, and it's heading this way. They also tell me that whatever it's using for propulsion it ain't a fusion drive, and it's moving darn fast."

"Blunt as always. Thank you, Captain," Elsa said. She looked up at Kai, grinned and said, "Well, I think state priorities have been re-arranged. I won't have to sit next to Hans Meinard after all." She glanced toward the door leading to the parliamentary chamber, where she'd been in an attenuated conclave with eight of her nobles. "Kai, call an emergency conclave."

The chamber received the announcement with shock. The eight who had agreed to meet with her at the castle were newly joined by the images of twelve others, all looking down from life-sized video screens that had emerged from the floor behind each noble's official chair. "It's a trick!" the Duke of Carrington said when he came to his senses. He pounded his desk, and Elsa flinched as the speakers boomed out each thud. "Vesselton is up to something."

"Don't be ridiculous," Duke Chandrabahna said, also speaking without the permission of the Master of the Chamber. "Vesselton has nothing to gain from something like this. Vesselton and Arendelle have had a stable treaty for over fifty years, they contributed material and cargo to the last three starships we launched. We've managed to establish a decent trade relationship. They've even started trade with Corona! Why would they risk anything like that now?"

"Your Majesty," Carrington said as he gestured with something out of sight of his camera. "Vesselton is a closed state and a mystery. But we know well enough that they dislike the monarchy intently and have rebuffed every attempt by your noble family to reach out and give them a voice at the table." He gestured toward his right, where the one screen of the Vesselton Ambassador remained impassively dark. "You can't trust those machines."

"They're not machines, my Duke," Elsa said softly. "They're still as much flesh and blood where it counts as you are. We all share a common origin. They are our relatives and our family, and we owe them gratitude and respect for building our world."

"That was generations ago! I don't care if they _are_ the original terraformers, we've taken on responsibility for maintaining this world without them. Their program of transferring human consciousness to a machine is still underway, and they still resent us for our 'romantic notions of organic supremacy.'" His voice was ripe with sarcasm. "For all we know, they've foisted off talking to us on some lousy artificial intelligence."

"I know," Elsa said, her eyes on the table, looking at her gloves. Her hands. She made a fist with one hand, and saw Carrington try and fail to suppress a flinch. "But they haven't made that leap."

"Yet!"

"Your Highness," Duchesses Guiliel said. Elsa turned toward. Adelista Guiliel was one of Elsa's distant relatives, and her daughter was Elsa's closest friend., "They called their ship a 'long range exploratory cruiser.' Perhaps they spend a lot of time in cryogenic suspension. Perhaps there really is a sphere of human influence, and we just haven't been able to hear it. We are quite far out on the rim, thousands of light years from Sol, God only knows how, so maybe only now are they reaching us. We don't know who these strangers are."

Strangers. From afar. People who could come and go if and when they pleased. People who owed her no fealty, who shared with her no history, who looked upon her not as a Queen to be loved, feared, conspired against, opposed, honored, thwarted, or competed. And that voice, that sweet mezzo soprano that kept running through her mind.

"My noble men and women," she said, "I welcome your opinions, as well as the voice of any other in this chamber." She looked over the expectant faces, twelve men and eight women who ruled their districts with authority derived from Elsa's and the exigencies of history. "I don't see how we have a choice. The Royal Space Service has detected _something_ heading our way from the direction from which the message came, on a direct line from Thorin, and that something isn't a fusion drive and it isn't something Vesselton has ever put into space. While we should certainly concentrate our forces to prepare for the worst, if these people are from a human civilization other than our own, they'll have technologies we can't begin to imagine, nor at this moment should we try. They're asking for a parking orbit and formal contact with my government." She smiled. "At the very least, we can give them those. I look forward to it."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's comments go at the bottom, ya?<strong> I was inspired to write this because, well, I haven't written anything in a while and it looked like a fun little project. Little did I realize it was going to become a fun, _huge _project that was going to eat up most of my writing time! This started out as _Frozen_ fanfic so it has our two favorite protagonists, and yes, it's going to get all MA on you with cute sexxors scenes later. But it ended up, as a lot of my fanfics do, with the kitchen sink; there'll be Rapunzel and Flynn, and Gothel later, and Tamora Jean Calhoun, as major characters, plus cameos from pretty much across the wide spectrum of animated movies.

I joked with a friend of mine that I'm probably the only person who could write an _Honor Harrington_ / _Frozen_ crossover, and she suggested I go for it. I'm leaving it as a _Frozen_ rather than a crossover because, as others have pointed out, that's where the audience is. Other than Elizabeth, who gets one brief scene toward the end, no major characters from the _Honorverse_ appear in _Captain and Queen._


	2. Chapter 2: Arendelle

Lieutenant VonSchweetz had put the shuttle down precisely on the landing pad indicated by Arendelle Airspace Control. VonSchweetz seemed to regard any light aircraft as her personal plaything and took great pleasure in the way the Navy supplied her with the ships and fuel necessary to indulge herself, but she was also the most natural pilot Anna had ever known and her landing was as smooth and professional as any Anna could have done herself. "Well done, Lieutenant." She nodded toward VonSchweetz as she exited the spacecraft.

She stepped out onto the cold, sunlit tarmac of Arendelle's capital city airport and inhaled deeply as she helped her treecat, Olaf, onto her shoulder. The facility spread out in a concrete apron in every direction. The roaring engines of modest-sized civilian aircraft indicated both a thriving economy and complete lack of gravitic technology. The deliciously chill air was full of pine and ozone, a heady mixture of mountain air and aviation fuel mixing with the salt tang of a nearby ocean and the metallic dust of civilization. It reminded her so much of the smell of Copperwell she fought off a surge of nostalgia. "Now, _this_ is a planet."

"Huh," Kristoff said. "Noisy, though. What do you think, Sven?"

The lanky, brown-furred treecat wrapped around the back of Kristoff's neck gave a cheerful 'bleek' and nodded in Anna's direction. He approved of her assessment. "He seems to like it here," Kristoff said.

Unlike Sven, Olaf chose to ride Anna's shoulder in the more traditional treecat pose. That gave him the free truehands necessary to gesture as he willed. He gave a simple thumbs-up with his four-fingered truehand. "Oh, good," Anna said, "I think that makes three of us."

"Oh, I like it too," Kristoff said. "It does remind me of home."

"That it does," Anna said, sighing. She and Kristoff exchanged grins. She supposed that she should have been more professional toward her chief executive officer, but he was _Kristoff_, her best friend from their days together on Saganami Island and the only other cadet who had had a treecat. They were of different ages and classes but being part of _the adopted_ overrode such petty considerations.

They'd been given a large aircraft VTOL pad for landing. Arendelle apparently had few viable surface-to-orbit shuttlecraft and none of them were VTOL. Their main technology for getting things into space was the massive space elevator that rose thousands of kilometers from an anchor on the equator. Nobody in human space used such ancient technology anymore. Even Terra had dismantled theirs a thousand years ago. Approaching Arendelle had felt like entering a fairyland description of a space-capable civilization.

Doctors Flynn Fitzhubert and Donald Pine followed them out the hatch. Flynn was still babbling. "It's incredible," he said, shading his eyes from the sun to have a look around. "I can barely see the space elevator from here. Just imagine it, Captain DuVar. These people don't have gravitics or hyperdrive, but they're still significant steps further along the Kardashev scale than we are!"

"What's the Kardashev scale?" Kristoff said.

Flynn crossed his arms and said, "It's the measure of how much power a civilization uses, Commander. A 'one' uses a whole planet. A 'two' uses a whole star. On that scale, these people are much closer to two than we are."

"Huh," Kristoff said. "Just because of those lasers."

"Those lasers are something, aren't they?" Flynn said. "I wonder what they're for. And the solettas," he said, pointing up at the broad minature suns that hung in the sky. "Those are really cool, let me tell you. That's the smartest thing I've ever seen for warming up regions of a biosphere, just hang a few really big mirrors in space! So much cheaper and safer than trying it with chemistry. This place would be a frozen wasteland without them; with them, summers are warm and crops can grow. It's brilliant! I imagine these people have a lot to teach us."

"I'm sure, Flynn," said Flynn's civilian superior, Doctor Donald Pine. "I'll just be happy when we get home so we can tell Manticore about what we have learned. Eh?" Anna held her face as still as she could.

Pine was technically in charge of all the scientists currently infesting her ship, and she was glad for every one of them. Their quick work in identifying and isolating this end of the wormhole junction meant that their four-month tour could have been over in as few as four hours. Then Flynn had spotted the strange "scintillations" seventy light-years away from the brown dwarf whose gravity well anchored this end of the terminus. They had been so clearly artificial that Anna had felt compelled to investigate. This far from Sol everyone had been sure they were coming on one of the first technological alien races. They had been ever more surprised to learn the world was populated by humans.

Pine had stressed his objections in every possible way to a delay in returning to the host ships back at Lynx. Anna reminded him that _Winterkiss_ had as much responsibility to scout the local area as _Harvest Joy_ had been given. The three-week transit time between the brown dwarf and the system they now knew as Arendelle was much greater than _Harvest Joy's_ experience at Lynx, which was only a half day's travel to the nearest inhabitable world, but that didn't mean Anna could neglect the responsibility.

Pine was still grumbling about it.

At the edge of the landing circle stood four long ground cars, wheeled, all painted dark green. Flags of white with a green stylized logo Anna didn't recognize adorned the hoods of each one, fluttering actively on the windy concrete platform. The men standing at each car wore professional uniforms, some in a dark green, some in a lighter green. Standing closest to the circle were two people, a short, stout man in the light green uniform, and a tall, blonde woman in the dark green. She stood with that still reserve Anna recognized on a professional soldier, one who'd been at her duty a long time. She was standing tall, one hand on her chin, regarding the pinnace carefully, one finger tapping idly. The man spoke first. "Welcome to Arendelle, Captain DuVar. I am Kai, Senior Secretary to the Queen." He eyed the treecats with wary curiosity..

Anna bowed. "Thank you, Kai." She introduced the other five members of her party by name, and mentioned that Lieutenant VonSchweetz and a Marine would be remaining with the shuttlecraft.

"And Olaf and Sven are also members of your crew?" He indicated the two stretches of ten-plus kilos of treecat, each riding their adopted humans' shoulder.

"Yes," Anna said. "Olaf and Sven score quite high on the sentience scale. They're crewmembers with all the rights and responsibilities thereof. Don't underestimate them."

Kai looked at Olaf. Anna couldn't see what Olaf did, only feel him shift against her shoulder, but Kai smiled and said, "Understood, Mr. Olaf. I won't make that mistake again." He bowed a sweeping gesture toward the third car. "Right this way, please."

Flynn had first theorized that Arendelle and its neighbor might be at war with one another. The scintillations had been lasers, each one more massive than the combined weight of the entire Manticore Navy's laser broadside, reaching out from one star to the other. As they'd approached Arendelle, the lasers' origins had resolved into a collection of massive platforms in close orbit around the star, solar collectors that transmuted the sun's energy into coherent beams of light poured toward the neighboring star system.

The neighboring star system was shooting back.

The drive from the airport to the city proper revealed a beautiful countryside so naturally peaceful it seemed impossible that Arendelle was a country at war. They were driven along a gently winding road that wrapped around a ridge of hills and broke open onto a vast bowl of a city that edged right up to the sea. Chantel, Arendelle's capital city, looked northward from the edge of an equatorial continent, and Anna could see to the west a vast port with ships moving in and out. "Hmm," Flynn said. "Mixed-purpose zoning, but with some moderate industrial segregated to the west, but I'm also seeing a very good transit system." He rubbed his goatee thoughtfully. "Mostly low buildings, lovely standards of architecture. Lots of trees, mostly narrow roads, no more than one-fifth intended for lorries. Standard Alexandrian." He looked up. "No aircraft."

"Chantel is a royal residence," Kristoff said. "It's likely they require all aircraft be routed far away."

"There is plenty of shipping with which to sneak in an attack," Pine said.

Kristoff said, "Doctor Pine, ships don't come in at multiples of the speed of sound. It's easy to intercept and scan a ship. An airplane by itself can be a hurtling missile."

"What's to stop them from a fractional-c bombardment from space then?"

Kai stiffened. Anna tightened her mouth. This was _not_ the time or place to be discussing how a military force might attack or occupy Arendelle's royal palace. Flynn said, "That seems unlikely. The economy here is definitely one where access to space is something only governments can provide. So far as we've been able to tell, there's only one government. Aircraft, however, are probably within the reach of civilian actors. I think Arendelle is demonstrating a great deal of prudence in keeping the airspace around Chantel clear. What do you think of prudence, Captain?"

"Oh, prudence is really important, in lots of ways," she said, staring at Pine, her lips thin with tension.

The sea beyond Chantel was even more blue than Anna's beloved Iron Fjord's, blown by the cold, light wind so that it glinted like hammered steel. Aside from container cargo ships, only a few pleasure craft dared the chill wind to play in the bay.

Anna turned to the secretary. "Kai, who are we to see first?"

"I thought we'd made that clear, Captain. Your first audience will be with The Queen."

Anna froze. She'd never met Queen Elizabeth. She'd seen her, once, from far away, on a high dias, at a ceremony honoring her graduation from the Advanced Tactical Course and her advancement to the rank of Senior Commander, the last rank one could hold before Captain. She had come down to visit the government of Arendelle. She didn't have the first notion on how to act in front of a Queen. Especially not a foreign one! "I hope we get along, then," she said, as inept as a freshie. She sank back into her chair.

Kristoff chuckled. "You'll be fine," he said.

"Is the queen a busy woman?" Anna asked. "I wouldn't want to take up too much of her time. I know how hard it is running a starship. I can't imagine what running an entire starsystem must be like." Anna clenched her fists. Her tendency to ramble always broke out when she was stressed. Or happy, but this wasn't one of those occasions.

"Her Majesty has office hours that she keeps with great discipline, and a reliable bureaucracy," Kai said, grinning much like a treecat. Anna could see how he earned his position. Just listening to his voice opened up entire images in her head of people working efficiently at desks, and at the center a woman of calm poise, turning pages, dispatching memos. She wasn't sure what the woman looked like. The only template she had for a queen was Elizabeth Winton.

The convoy turned left around a tight bend and into the city proper. Few buildings were more than two or three stories tall. The facades used glass and hand-painted signs and brick. The sidewalks were decorated in myriad ways: patterns of glass, swirls of copper, and in a few places illuminated strips animated storefronts. The roads were paved with dark green interlocking hexagons, a strange cobblestone that she couldn't feel at all beneath the tires. The people of the city were mostly short, mostly stocky like Kai was stocky, and going about their business as if the frigid temperature was only a minor nuisance. They waved cheerfully at the ground car as it passed and Kai waved back. Anna saw men, women and children in the recognizeable configurations of human beings and felt relief. This wasn't a planet like Sharpton, where having prominent cyborg implants was a badge of honor.

The cars crossed a broad, short bridge to a palace which sat on a pier over the water, separate from the city. It was a broad construction, beautiful and soaring, with a single spire reaching heavenwards topped by the odd, swirling logo. They passed through gates with only the lightest of honor guards and then through a heavy door into a much more heavily defended inner yard. The cars pulled up to a portico.

Kai led the Manticorans into a vast hallway of wood flooring lined with dark-green banners. The architecture was broad and breezy, conveying a sense of light and joy. The materials were first-rate and hand-crafted. Whoever had built this place had loved doing so.

Kai listened to something in an earbug, then nodded. "Follow me, please." He led them deeper into the building, around a corner, and into a smaller reception room. The walls were light wood hung with banners. A tall, narrow window framed one woman standing at the opposite end of the room. "Your Majesty, may I present Captain Anna DuVar and Olaf, and Chief Executive Officer Commandor Kristoff Bjorgman and Sven, Doctor Donald Pine and Doctor Flynn Fitzhubert, of the Royal Manticoran Navy Light Exploratory Cruiser _Winterkiss_." Anna delighted in how competently he'd said that even without notes.

"Captain, Commander, gentlemen, I present to you Queen Elsa of Arendelle."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's comments go at the bottom, ya?<strong> This was fun to write. It's really hard getting everything correct, and and then doing it again and again. But hey, Olaf and Sven make sense here, ya?


	3. Chapter 3: Queen Elsa of Arendelle

Anna gasped silently. She had seen many beautiful women in her years. Elsa was beyond all of them. Elsa was a dream from another life, an alternate universe, a fairy tale legend. Tall, taller than Anna with skin the color inside a pear and hair so blonde that it looked like silver. Anna was sure that was its natural color. She was a radiant counterpoint to the magnificent dark skin of House Winton. She wore a black, silken blouse under a turquoise jumpdress that did not hide her curves. Her face was impassive, her lips drawn tight, and Anna couldn't tell if that tightness was worry, stress, anger, or fear. But it was her eyes, those pale blue eyes, eyes with vast, deep irises, that Anna suddenly wanted to fall forever into. "Welcome," Elsa said. Her soft, husky, precise voice went deep into Anna's belly. "Welcome to Arendelle."

Anna managed to find her own voice soon enough to say, "Thank you, Your Majesty." She curtsied deeply, emulating the Grayson dip as best as she could. It seemed appropriate, somehow. She stood and regarded the Queen.

Each looked at the other for far longer than was necessary before Elsa said, "Is this something I can expect to have happen frequently? Commander Buzz's report indicates he believes your report of faster-than-light travel."

Commander Adolph Buzz had been Arendelle's military officer in charge of assessing _Winterkiss_ when it had first arrived. He'd arrived in the most delicate shuttle Anna had ever seen, but he'd had the body of a marine and the mind of an engineer, and he'd had a very long conversation with Chief Engineer Ficksit. The feel of artificial gravity had almost overwhelmed him. Anna had liked him and, like Kai, he no longer underestimated treecats. "I hope so. You are the nearest inhabited star system to the far end of a hyperspace wormhole junction to which Manticore has now officially laid territorial claim." Anna took a deep breath, surprised she'd gotten that right. "Manticore is always pleased to have good neighbors and trading partners. Especially peaceful ones."

Elsa was still staring at her, and her eyes had gone huge. Although Olaf was on her shoulder, Anna was sure Elsa was looking at her. Anna felt like she was being analyzed. Scanned. As if someone had finally seen all the way through her, someone other than Olaf. Elsa shook her head gently, and when she did her voice sounded distant and nervous. "I see. We aren't used to having neighbors. Other than Corona, of course. I hope we learn how to do that successfully."

Anna's conversations with Commander Buzz had been gracious and calm. He didn't seem like the kind of man prosecuting an ongoing war. But that still begged the question of the massive solar laser installations. "Your Majesty, we haven't been in your space long enough for details, but I must ask: Are you at war with your neighbor? The one you're shooting those lasers at?"

"At war with Corona?" Elsa laughed. "No, of course not!"

"Your Majesty," Flynn said. Anna admired the modulation in his voice. "I didn't believe you were. But then, what are the laser beams for? From the solar orbital platforms. Forgive me for speaking out of turn."

Elsa's smile at him was a kilometer of pure mercy. "Those are our starships drives, Doctor," she said.

"Wait," Doctor Pine cried as something clicked. "You mean to tell me you have _ongoing trade_ with your stellar neighbor using slower-than-light transportation? Using beamed laser sails?"

Elsa smiled, and now she seemed genuinely pleased. "Yes. It's one of our most proud achievements."

"It's... " Pine clamped his teeth together to avoid saying anything that might further upset the meeting.

"It's amazing!" Flynn said.

"We think so," Elsa said, her eyes flashing. She caressed the back of her wrist, and Anna saw a small wristcomp attached to her glove. Elsa's face took on the impassive look it had had when they'd first entered. It was a face that Anna could stared at for hours. "We aren't sure how to proceed. We understand you've offered your publicly available encyclopedia, with its history and science of the Diaspora. That will prove invaluable to us. Rumors about your presence here on Arendelle have already begun to appear on our news networks, and I will be making a public statement about Manticore tomorrow. I'd like to know what I'll be making a statement about. To that end, I've asked Admiral Prost to brief you and your scientists on the public face of Arendelle's situation to the best of his ability, in a fair trade of information. I believe you'll find him a competent man."

Anna recognized the end of an audience, yet she didn't want it to end. She had so much more to ask. Olaf's claws dug into the reinforced, armored padding of Anna's flight tunic, and Anna reached up to stroke him. He purred reassuringly. "Thank you, Your Majesty."

"Kai will take you to the conference center. Feel free to ask anything. Is there something special you need?"

"Cocoa or, I suppose if it's all you have, coffee," Anna blurted. Elsa smiled at her, the first honest smile she'd had. "A small plate of meat, chicken or duck, cooked, is fine for our treecats. And a few celery sticks for them, too, if you have any?"

Elsa managed a small, uncomfortable smile. "I think the kitchen can manage that."

"Yes, your majesty," Kai said in that magnificent voice. "We certainly can."

* * *

><p>The next several hours slid by Anna in a blur. She absorbed as much information as she could, continuing to be impressed with Arendelle and Corona and an interstellar trade in actual, physical goods and people over two light years at fractional C speeds. Pine and Fitzhubert immersed themselves in the Castle library and disappeared, as far as she could tell. She let Kristoff take the lead in questioning the military people Arendelle provided, since he was always good about asking the right questions and finding the right answers. Arendelle wasn't entirely idyllic. There were factions, there were Dukes and duchies that engaged in passive defiance of Elsa's rule, and there was that strange, silent outpost orbiting out by Arendelle's sole moon, a ball of rock smaller than Thorson or Luna, and even further away. In Arendelle's night sky it would be a tiny, indistinct circle of light. Anna heard the name "Vesselton," and the implication that it was an independent state of its own. Arendelle even a few violent extremist groups. Anna had the nastiest sensation that her very presence was going to upset a lot of people, but someone else's domestic politics weren't her concern.<p>

Elsa. God, she'd never seen anyone that struck her so... so... Anna didn't have a word for it. It wasn't infatuation. Anna knew what that felt like, she'd been through it several times. This didn't feel like infatuation. She wanted to write it down to mere power, but she'd never felt like this when she'd met the Duke of Sphinx, and he'd certainly been both handsome and powerful. Anna had never been impressed with power.

Olaf's claws dug into her tunic and he chittered in her ear. "I know, snowball, I know. I'm sorry." She reached up to stroke his chin, and he buried his cool nose in the hair behind her right ear, making her smile.

Everyone who had a treecat used the word "love" to describe their feelings for that fluffy source of joy and security in their lives. Everyone except Captain Anna DuVar. She had had a few lovers in the physical sense in that brief rush of adolescent hormones at the Academy on Saganmi Island, most but not all men, and fewer still in the twenty-five years of her career since. Her friends had often- unfairly!- compared her romantic history to that of the legendary Admiral of the Green. Unfairly because Anna, at least, had romantic and sexual attractions that came first, whereas the Admiral seemed to be one of those whose physical interest came only after emotional attachment.

"Captain?" Kristoff's voice broke her reverie.

"Yes? What is it?"

"Admiral Prost and and DIO Favier were just finishing up. Is there anything you wanted to add?"

"No, thank you. I'm sorry, I was thinking of something else. I'm afraid I'm much more of a reader than a listener. When it comes to large infodumps."

Favier, who was Elsa's domestic intelligence officer, nodded. "I understand completely, Ma'am. I am too. Your communications officer was kind enough to help us create a protocol layer for transferring data back and forth, so all of this material should already be available on your readers."

"Thank you. Kristoff, remind me to thank Lieutenant Metzinger when we get back."

"Done," Kristoff said, his burly arms folded over his chest. Anna looked up and noticed that it had grown dark outside. Snow was blowing gently against the windows. "Hmm. Ship time, it would be almost midnight." He gestured to the tray of sandwiches that had been brought in. Anna had found them reliably familiar. Across time and space, some things never changed. Like a ham sandwich. "When was the last time you had a real meal, Captain?"

"Sandwiches are a real meal," Anna said. Kristoff lowered his eyebrows at her. "Okay, okay. Hours ago."

The door opened and let in a short woman in the lighter green uniform Anna was starting to recognize as indicating palace staff, rather than palace security. "Captain DuVar?"

"Yes?"

"Forgive me for the intrusion. My timing seems to be fortunate. Queen Elsa would like to know if you would care to join her for a late supper?"

"Wait, what?"

"Her Majesty asked me to ask you, personally, if you and your furry friend would care to have supper with her in fifteen minutes."

"Well then, I guess your needs are met," Kristoff said. He grabbed another sandwich off the tray. Sven was munching on a carrot. Anna shook her head. Sven was weird, even for a treecat.

"I can't just go to dinner with a Queen, dressed like this."

Kristoff tilted his head toward the servant. "She seems to think you can."

"What about you? Are you going to be okay?"

"I'm sure we can offer your XO something," Prost said. "In fact, Commander, would you like to join my staff in a late working dinner of our own?"

"Love to," Kristoff said through a mouthful of bread and whatever had been stuffed into it. "With your permission, Captain?"

"Granted, Commander," Anna said distantly. Kristoff's salute was sloppy, but Anna forgave him. Her mother had always liked Kristoff, and took every opportunity to remind her how much she _liked_ Kristoff. Then again, her mother had been a commoner, and her father had married for love, and look how well _that_ worked out. Anna paused to push all the romantic and emotional messes in her life down into the depths where she could safely ignore them.

She stood, checked her space-black formals, flicked away an invisible and possibly imaginary fleck of lint. "Yes, I guess I can. What's your name? Have you known the Queen long?" she gently asked the servant.

"I'm Gerda, Captain. Kai and I have been Queen Elsa's senior secretary and majordomo since she was born."

"Oh. I'm pleased to meet you, then," she said, bowing briefly. "Is there something I should know before meeting the queen once more?"

Gerda paused, one finger pressed to her jawline in thought. "No, I don't think so. It's most unusual. She doesn't have guests often."

"How many guests will be there?"

"Oh, just you, Captain. And Olaf."

Anna gave Kristoff a harried glance. He shrugged. "What do I know what it means to meet a queen? For that matter, what does this 'queen' do? What's her role and responsibilities, compared to the prime minister? There is one, you know. There's a lot of intelligence to gather here."

"Meaning, I should go gather some," Anna said.

"We're going to." He indicated Prost. Prost had been looking at Anna with careful introspection. He bowed with understanding self-deprecation at Kristoff's comment.

Anna turned back to Gerda, straightening herself taller. "We'd be delighted to join your Queen at dinner." She swallowed and hoped she wasn't lying.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's comments go at the bottom, ya?<strong>

Despite the fact that I set out to write _Elsanna_ fanfic, there's a lot of _Star Kingdom_ stuff in here. I didn't set out to do more Weber than Snow Queen, and I'll get to more fluff and stuff in the future.

But hey, _sandwiches_.


	4. Chapter 4: Dinner with the Queen

"Why am I doing this, again?" Elsa said, looking at the window on her tablet where cameras tracked Gerda and Captain DuVar's progress through the castle.

Kai's broad smile softened with understanding. "Because you said you 'needed a better grip on what these "Manticorans" offer.' I believe that was a direct quote, Your Majesty."

Elsa rubbed her hands together nervously. "But she's a stranger!" She was also, Elsa admitted, exquisitely beautiful in a way Elsa had never felt before, a thought she crushed ruthlessly. This was not the time to let her mind go down that track. There was never a time.

"And to her, so are you. Her ship belongs to the _Royal_ Manticoran Navy. She has a Queen of her own. She understands protocol." He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. It was the most human touch Elsa ever experienced these day, and only because he'd been one of the few authorized to change her diapers half his lifetime ago, and he'd been the one to hold her the few times her facade had cracked. After her parents had- "Elsa..." She looked up. She felt tears in her eyes. "I know this can't be easy. You've never been good with people. But you must learn." He glanced down at the tablet. "Gerda is bringing her into the dining room."

"Do I have to?" Kai stared at her. "Fine," Elsa said, drawing herself up even as Kai retracted his hand. He reached into a pocket and handed her a handkerchief. She wiped her eyes and handed it back to him. "Thank you."

"You're always welcome."

The room to which Gerda had led Anna and her strange creature was a vast hall with a large table suitable to sit twenty people. The ceiling was at least eight meters away, with a massive crystalline chandelier of modern geometric precision hanging directly above the table. There were three settings, one at the head and to the immediate right and an elegant wooden high chair to the right of that. One of the "librarians" had engaged Doctor Pine on the treecats and he had held forth at appreciable length about the protocol, including the "ridiculous need" for them to sit at the table next to "their person."

As she entered the room on her quiet, soft shoes, Captain DuVar was facing away from her saying, "Remember, snowball, look but don't touch it, okay?"

"Bleek!" the white-furred beast responded before gleefully dancing in front of the fireplace.

Despite her apprehension, Elsa giggled at the beast's antics. "Well, he seems sprightly. Does he like fireplaces?"

"Your Majesty!" Captain DuVar turned and bowed deeply. "I didn't hear you enter. Forgive me." She was blushing. Even within her honey-dark skin, the blush added a bright, illumning glow to her already stunning appearance. She bowed.

Elsa smiled, her hand covering her mouth again as if to hide it. "There's no need. The court's formality is one thing, but let's not need it in here, Captain. There will be time for that later, when your government's formal representatives arrive. May I call you Anna?"

"Yes, of course, Your Majesty." Anna straightened. "He has manners but no respect for them. He's always loved fireplaces. Our homeworld, Sphinx, his and mine, is similar to Arendelle, but our winters are much, much longer. Treecats have a kind of hibernation to get through the winter, but when Olaf learned that moving in with humans meant he could play in the snow and hunt as much as he wanted _and_ come inside and curl up by the fire, he was in ecstasy. He's loved fireplaces ever since." She sighed. "Sometimes I feel bad taking him so far from his home and his family and the weather he knew and the foods he loves."

Elsa had no idea how Anna knew Olaf wanted her attention, but Anna turned. Olaf stood up on his hindquarters, his true hands tracing signs and symbols in the air. Anna smiled back at him, shyly.

"What was that?" Elsa said. "Is that how he talks?"

Anna nodded. "He can't speak human languages with his mouth shaped like that, so we have a sign language."

"And what did he say?"

Anna blushed. "'Some people are worth leaving home for.'"

Olaf chittered at her from his warm curl before the fireplace. "I know, Olaf, I know. I'm sorry."

"Please," Elsa said, "Come eat." She was glad to have a reason to tear her eyes away from Anna. The RMN Naval uniform of black and gold fit snugly about Anna's body, showing off every line and curve. Only below the calves and the wrists did there seem to be any give at all to the outfit. Even Anna's jacket was closely tailored. Anna's warm auburn hair was tightly fit about her head and held down with twin braids. "Who braids your hair?" She felt her face flush. Why had she asked that?

"Oh, Claire does it," Anna said as she waited for Elsa to sit. Elsa did, and Anna followed. "My steward. She looks after me. I think she's afraid if she weren't there I would forget to eat, or bathe, or remember how to button my own uniform. Every captain above a tin-can- a destroyer, sorry- gets a steward, and I think they all go through some kind of training with a professional mother hen, because my last steward, James, was the same way. My mother was never this obsessed with keeping up my appearances." Anna abruptly clamped her mouth shut. "Sorry. I ramble. Nervousness."

"That quite all right," Elsa said, relaxing slightly. If Anna was comfortable enough to admit she was nervous, Elsa could do the same. She glanced over at the fireplace. "Will Olaf join us?"

Olaf galloped over to the table and scrambled up into the chair, sat with precision, and with one true hand and excessive airs drank from a tall, crystal goblet of water. He nodded a thanks to Elsa. "I see," Elsa said, pleasantly surprised by the clear intelligence in those eyes. "Yes, Kai warned me that Olaf, and your executive officer's treecat, Sven?" Anna nodded. "They were not to be underestimated." Elsa raised a glass and briefly tilted it back toward Olaf in a toast.

Servants brought plates of food, in a classical order any diner on Manticore would have recognized: soup, salad, roasted poultry and vegetables with a rich mushroom gravy. And wine. "Do you like the wine?" Elsa asked as Anna sipped it.

"Oh, it's very good," Anna said. "A little sharper than a lot of what I've had on Manticore. A lot like Sphinx wines. It's nice." They ate in silence. Olaf disdained the soup and salad, but he sliced into the meats using a knife and fork. He exhibited exemplary table manners. "Oh!" Anna said. "You're left-handed. So am I."

Elsa nodded. "Is it as rare on Manticore as it is here?"

"It's not common, no." She made a show of looking around the room. "Your city is so pretty. Your palace is as beautiful as you are," Anna said. "Wait, what? I'm sorry, that was... awkward. I'm not used to, I mean, I'm awkward."

"Thank you," Elsa said, and laughed, holding her hand over her mouth and looking away for a moment and taking a deep breath before turning back. "Yes, it's beautiful. My father loved it. It was built shortly after, the, well, what do you know of the history of Arendelle, Anna?"

"Well, nothing," Anna said. "It wasn't something your intelligence people covered."

Elsa glanced up at the ceiling. "Arendelle was originally a corporatism colony, but only a few generations after we arrived a fungus struck our farms. Starvation broke out. And the people who held the most stock used their power to hoard as much as they could. My ancestor, Anton the First, led an insurgency that took control of the cybernetic infrastructure of Arendelle. Communications, the space elevator, the solettas, the automated farms. Especially the island farms, the ones isolated from the mainland. A quarter of the population died of starvation. Half of what was left died in the war."

"I'm sorry," Anna said. "For your suffering."

"It's history," Elsa said. "Almost eight hundred years ago, now. Anton organized the surviving biologists into a crash program to fight the fungus. They succeeded, but only because he made sure they had enough food and the military to protect them had enough food, at the cost of, well." Anna nodded. "After the war, Anton restructured the corporations into entailments, reparcelling the land, and created the firsts Dukes and duchies, and himself as Anton the First, Monarch of Arendelle. History records that he was brutal in war, and wise in peace. He built this place. It's been rebuilt several times. But we've have eight centuries of peace and relative prosperity."

"Manticore isn't going to do anything to upset that."

"But you already have, Anna," Elsa said. "After all, what did Anton really control? Farms and communication gear can be replicated. But access to space, and the solettas that double the amount of sunlight a duchy receives, those are the sole province of the crown."

"Oh. Dr. Fitzhubert and I were discussing how access to space is probably a government prerogative. Without gravitics, it's..." Elsa could see the wheels clicking. "Oh. Oh, I'm sorry, Elsa. It didn't occur to me, that when we arrived..." Anna put her hand to her mouth. "I'm so sorry. Forgive me. I meant, Your Majesty, not..."

"You can call me 'Elsa' here. Please, I'd prefer it if you did." Elsa looked at Anna now and saw the earnest woman behind the Captain's facade, the decent, worried professional and her humane counterpart. Elsa realized she could watch Anna's mouth move all day long. "My domestic concerns can't be yours, Anna."

"Still," Anna said. "I'm sorry. About that."

"So, Manticore has a queen. Are monarchies common, where you're from?"

"There are a few. Manticore, Andermann. Republics are more common among the wealthy states, and dictatorships are terribly common among the less economically developed colonies."

"How does your monarchy work?"

Anna rambled for a bit, describing what sounded like an incredibly arcane arrangement of a government, a state, a military, and a populace, with both written laws and unwritten rules about how they interacted. "The main point," Anna said, "Is that within a star system's hyperlimit, there has to be a single, legal authority responsible for space, to defend the commerce from raiders and enforce tariff, trade, and quarantine."

"Quarantine? For diseases?"

"Well, mostly animal pests. There was an outbreak of this disgusting strawberry maggot on Sphinx when I was young. They finally figured out a topical immunization program, but I never got to have fresh strawberries as a kid. It wasn't nearly as bad as your fungus, though. And we could always get bags of frozen strawberries shipped over from farms on Manticore. So there was always strawberry puree for banana splits."

"A single legal authority." Elsa drummed her fingers on the table momentarily. "We might have a problem. We have Vesselton. They might argue."

"Admiral Prost mentioned them. What are they?"

"The Vessel- Vesselton- was, or is, part of the colony ship that reached Arendelle. Some of the original terraformers were heavily cyborgized for zero-g survival. When they were done, some of the ones that didn't move on to Corona didn't want to land, either. They remained in space, and moved their ship into an orbit around Arendelle's moon. They're still out there. There were only a few thousand when they left. I don't know how many there are now."

"They must be centuries old!"

"I've spoken with a few of them. We have contact, still, and a sort of trade. My scientists tell me the images we're seeing are animations, digitally produced. We have no idea what they're really like now. For all we know, they're just brains in jars."

Anna shuddered. "That sort of technology is possible. I've heard some Sollies had gone that way. I can't imagine how hard it must be. Admiral Prost said they were difficult?"

"They have grown more difficult as the years have passed." She kept her eyes off Anna. She wanted to look at the other woman all night, but that would have been rude. "They resented Anton's restructuring of the government into a kingdom. It doesn't seem to have occurred to them that we've had a succession of successful kings and queens and a working legislative House of Commons, while Garrit Petrona has been 'captain' and 'mayor' of the Vessel for all that time.

"But they do trade with us. They have a lunar mining facility, and it's easier for them to send ore down the gravity well than for us to send it up the Elevator. We provide them with fresh food and water. They helped build the starship lasers and the laser focusing rings, and our communications laser station at the edge of the solar system that listens to Corona without interference from our star or our gas giants. They were our friends and family once. Now they're..." She sighed. "They're angry that they haven't succeeded in their final project, and they're angry that we won't help them. It's sad how they seem to be slipping away." She looked down at her gloved hands.

Elsa told the tale as she'd heard it thousands of times. "That's horrible," Anna said.

Elsa shrugged. "Yes, well, it's my 'horrible' to deal with."

"What is their 'final project?' If you're free to tell me."

"They call it 'substrate independence.' It means that they want to be able to transfer their consciousness to something other than, well, a human brain." Elsa put her fingers to her gloved forehead momentarily. "I don't suppose...?"

"Gross," Anna said. "I don't think anyone's tried that in human space in a long time."

"'Human space?' Is there some other? Aliens?"

Anna said, "No. I mean, there are a few other alien species that we know are sentient, and we've found a lot of alien biospheres, but humanity is the only spacefaring species that we know of."

"Oh."

"Where are you parents?"

"Oh," Elsa said, a wave of sadness washing over her. She should have known the question would come up. "They... died. In a boating accident. Six years ago."

"I'm so sorry."

Anna looked like she'd kicked someone's puppy. Elsa tried to be understanding, but every time she thought about that day the pain was nearly overwhelming. "I am too. I miss them. I had a regency for three years, and I've been Queen for three since then."

"How old are you?" Anna said suddenly. "I'm sorry, forgive me. That's just me being awkward again."

"I'm twenty-one Arendelle years old. Twenty-four Terran."

"You're half my age."

"You're forty-eight Terran?"

"Forty-seven," Anna said.

"You don't look it," Elsa said.

"We have Prolong. It extends the lifespan."

"I see. Is it something you can take? Or does it have to be done in vitro?"

"No, the initial treatment can be done after you're born. The earlier you start, the longer it lasts, and every generation lives a little longer. If you're twenty-four, you can probably expect to live to be almost a hundred and sixty if you got it soon."

"I see." Elsa didn't know how to pursue the conversation further. It seemed impossible to imagine that they'd run out of things to say to one another. She wanted to hear more of Anna's voice, listen to more of Anna's tales.

Anna said, "Where does Corona fit in?"

Elsa was grateful for the change of subject. She knew her citizens would clamor for this Prolong procedure when they learned of it. She would never do it, herself. "Oh, Corona. After the terraformers were done here, some went on to Corona, including Captain Gothel. All we had were a few much smaller laser platforms then, so the trip took almost a century. The ship was heavier, too, because it had laser sails for acceleration and electrical sails for brakes. After the war, though, there weren't enough manufactories, skilled engineers, or even colonists to build a new sleeper ship and send colonists across deep space. The engineers' ship we'd already sent didn't even know what had happened. They just kept doing their jobs. Three centuries ago, my great-great-grandfather, Anton the Sixth, announced that it was time to finish the Corona mission. He convinced Parliament to give him the funds, and they built the first set of heavy solar orbit arrays and the _Arendelle Humbled_, and sent 120,000 people across the gap, including his own second son, Errol. They arrived after a 24-year voyage and successfully set up a new colony. The population now is about a million." She grinned. "They've been busy over there. Not that we've been slacking here. Our initial population was almost 300,000 people, and we're up to fourteen million now. Some of them emigrate to Corona. And a few Coronas have even come here." She shook her head, and her voice became soft and distant. "I have a cousin there. A second cousin. Her name is Rapunzel. I never thought I'd have a chance to meet her. Not until now." She favored Anna with a smile.

"We'll do what we can," Anna said.

A servant place a small round cake just big enough for two in front of them, and sliced out a quarter for each woman. Under the intense, rich smell of chocolate Elsa tasted raspberries and a hint of coffee in the mix. It was insanely dark and dense. Anna let out a small moan of appreciation, and Elsa felt that sound deep inside herself. She shook her head briefly as if shooing away a bug. "Tell me about Sphinx."

Anna did. She avoided anything of a military nature, but clearly she felt comfortable telling Elsa a lot of personal details besides. She'd grown up in Iron Fjord, near the foot of the Black Rock Mountains. She'd been hiking there just before taking up her commission at the academy when she'd met Olaf.

"Does it normally happen in childhood? That adoption? Is it common?"

"It's very rare, actually," Anna said. "And it usually happens in the late teens. I had Olaf when I was eighteen. Kristoff had his when he was seven, which people tell me almost never happens. My parents couldn't believe it when it happened to me. I was such a... a flight. I talk too much, I ramble, I'm hyper, I'm too positive, so I'm told. When we bonded, it was that something- he can't put a name to it, and neither can I- that made us whole. Whatever it was, it gave me the strength to finish the academy. People say it made me be a good starship captain, too."

Elsa breathed deep. "I'm envious of you both."

"I dunno," Anna said. "The bond is strange. It's an empathy bond that makes both the human and the treecat emotionally stronger. And emotionally more distant from both other treecats, and other humans. I've never felt 'normal.'"

"Neither have I," Elsa said with a sigh. She traded back with stories from her own childhood. She had a few childhood friends, but everyone knew she was destined to be queen and arranged their prejudices accordingly. That loneliness had been brutally punctuated by the disappearance of wonderfully loving parents.

Their conversation moved on. Arendelle's music had the advantage of knowing all the styles Earth had had to offer in the third century Post- Diaspora, styles which had more or less completely mapped out the genres of music the human ear enjoyed. Anna defended Manticore's own musical traditions even though she said they had grown staid and local. Elsa hardly cared. She could have listened Anna for hours. Even if the woman was doing nothing more than a rambling monologue of the deciannual census report, Elsa would have been enraptured.

The only question Elsa really had was _why_.

"Oh, my goodness," Anna said, looking down at her watch. "We've talked all evening! I'm so sorry, Your Highness, you must have better things to do than listen to me prattle on. Kristoff says I prattle. Actually, all of my commanders have said I tend to talk too much. Oops, I'm doing it, aren't I?"

"Anna, it's fine," Elsa said, and laughed, covering her mouth again with her hand. Elsa found it more than fine, she found it adorable. "I've never had an opportunity like this. It's unlikely I will have another very soon. You were certainly a more interesting dinner companion than Hans Meinard would have been."

"Who?"

"Please, never mind. I shouldn't have said that. It was inappropriate."

"But you have a Hans problem too?"

"Wait, what? A 'Hans' problem?"

Anna giggled and nodded. "Tell me about yours."

Elsa shrugged. "There's not much to tell. Hans Meinard is the son of Duke Brecht Meinard. The Meinard have one of the most distant duchies and one of the most conservative. Their loyalty to the crown is highly contingent on our playing nice." Elsa paused. "They seem to think that it would be politically beneficial to the crown if I married a man from the opposition. Hans Meinard is a fine man, or so I'm told. Not like his father at all. Studious, polite, and entirely without any reputation of any kind." She sighed. "But he's just one of many. My nobles seem to think it's time I settled down, married, and started on the great project of providing the kingdom with heirs. I'm just not..." She tore her eyes away from Anna's open, wistful face to look down the length of the dining room. "I'm just not ready to marry yet. I don't know if I ever will." Anna had leaned forward, her chin in her hand, her attention rapt on Elsa's words. "So, that's all there is to it. I take it from your comment that you have a 'Hans' in your life too?"

"Oh, Hans." Anna waved the suggestion away, the sighed. "Captain Hans Westergaard of her Majesty's Heavy Cruiser _Rune_. I'm still not sure what to make of the situation. We had been dating for about a year. He's in the Navy of the Red, and I'm in the Navy of the Green, so technically we can date each other. Sometimes I think the point of having two whole command structures is to provide a pool of officers we can date, not just the redundancy. Anyway, three weeks before I headed out on this expedition, he proposed marriage."

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him I would think about it. I also told my father. He thinks it's a great idea. Hans is the seventh son of the Earl of Summerisle, so he doesn't stand to inherit anything except maybe a stipend. I don't care. I want something more." Anna smiled, but Elsa could see her wrestling with unhappiness. "Hans said he loved me."

Anna straightened in her chair, and Elsa could see it almost as a force of will. "He said he loved me. But it's all a mess. My parents are separated and have filed for divorce. If they're not going to be together forever, what chance do I have? I still don't know what made them... I'm sorry. I'm rambling, and you probably don't want to hear all these painful little details. The point is, I like Hans, but marrying him feels like it would be settling, not winning. I have not been dealt a winning Hans."

Elsa laughed. "Anna, that was a terrible! But thank you for telling me." She rose, and Anna automatically rose in response. Elsa reached out one hand. "Thank you for coming to dinner."

Anna seemed to still be getting used to a queen's informal use of her common name, but she recovered enough to take Elsa's hand and close on it with a gentle, professional handshake. "Your Highness."

"Elsa."

"'Elsa,'" Anna said, with that same breathy pleasure she'd expressed over the dessert.

Elsa's heart beat louder in her heart. She swallowed. An impulse came over her. "Anna, can I ask one more favor of you? On behalf of your Queen?"

"Of course. I'll do what I can."

"Does your navy have a way to allow visitors on board?"

"Of course! We have a dining room for honored guests, and a tradition of courtesy calls with friendly- and potentially friendly- star nations wherever we go. It's all very important that we let our friends know what our ships can do for them, and listen to what needs they might have, and... sorry, I'm rambling again."

Elsa's couldn't help herself and laughed again. "I think it's charming. Anna, I've been able to visit most of my kingdom here, on the ground, but my security team has always told me that the elevator would be too dangerous, even for the four-hour trip to low orbit, much less a full trip up to the Anchor, which takes days. I'd like to visit your ship and, with your help, the furthest reach of my kingdom."

Elsa watched, impressed as Anna's professional face fell into place. The woman before her had just transitioned from guest to soldier in less than a heartbeat. "Is there really that much domestic unrest?"

"About a quarter of the people here dislike the policies of what is called 'my' government. A small fraction of that are always willing to be demonstrative. There are always a few."

"That sounds like Manticore. Elizabeth has a lot of security."

"So do I," Elsa said, her eyes momentarily hesitating at the corners of the room, where cameras watched over her every waking moment.

"Kristoff can work with your security. We'll make your visit one to remember, I'm sure. Thank you again, Your Highness." She bowed.

"Thank you, Captain," Elsa said. She watched Anna go, and then turned back toward her own door, her fists clenched with an emotion she couldn't name, directed at herself.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's comments go at the bottom, ya?<strong>

OMG, I'm so late with this one. I blame the turkey. And the stuffing. And the sheer volumes of food my family had yesterday. I'm stuffed, and not all of it with wine.

I tried to make this one fluffy. I'm bad at fluffy. And my favorite Elsanna story of all time is, (no surprises here), _Anna Summers, PA_, so I have a very, very high mark to hit


	5. Frying Pan

Kristoff had negotiated with Elsa's security detail, and the arrangement reached was suitable to Anna. There would be a total of twelve armsmen: four shifts of three, all but the active shift to be housed in guest staterooms near the pinnace docking bay, and to be accompanied by Anna's own small detail of Marines. To Anna's pleasure, Kristoff had also managed to get Commander Buzz to join them. Anna was left to abuse poor Claire with details for the dinner, all the while listening to Claire say, "Yes, Ma'am," and "It's a state dinner, Ma'am," and "It's what I'm trained for, Ma'am."

There was something about stewards. Claire was newly assigned to her this mission, but James had been more or less the same way. Then again, Anna had been allowed to choose her own meals, she'd probably eat sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner. With a dozen of those wicked chocolate-cream sandwich cookies for dessert.

Lieutenant Commander VonSchweetz piloted directly up to _Winterkiss_, nose to the aft quarter of the boat bay, and rotated the entire pinnace into the bay without a moment's hesitation. Anna loved great ship handling and VonSchweetz made it look easy. She had the attitude of a daredevil but she kept it reined in. Anna had sat in the center of the pinnace, Kristoff across from her, beside each the two treecats buckled into their restraining chairs and staring at each other with that _look_. Elsa had sat on the other side of the VIP row, her active duty security surrounding her and looking serious.

The head of Elsa's security detail was the tall, muscular woman Anna had met at the landing pad: severe with a brief, informal cut of light brown hair and a face that would have been beautiful if it hadn't been so intent. She'd been introduced as "Captain Tamora Jean Calhoun," and they'd exchanged looks that Anna read as "I won't hurt your ship if you don't hurt my Queen." Anna could keep her part of that bargain.

But ever since that dinner yesterday, she'd felt off-balance whenever she regarded Elsa. She couldn't even say why. The woman was always calm, always cool. Always achingly beautiful.

Once in a while, Anna would look up to find Elsa looking back at her. Their eyes would meet, and Anna would be unable to look away. Just looking into Elsa's eyes made her heart beat faster. _Stop it. She's not Lucy or Mai. She's not even in the same class as any of the men or women you've known. She's the ruler of an entire world. She's probably straight. Hans is waiting for your answer. And she has no interest in you._

Anna wasn't sure any of that constituted telling herself the truth.

The RMN's electronic whistle hailing the return of a ship's captain signaled through the boat bay, and Anna was relieved to see that her first tier command staff were in line, as perfectly turned out for the Queen of Arendelle as they might have been for the Queen of Manticore. She stifled a further quiver of pleasure as Elsa allowed her to guide the small party down the line, giving introductions to her crew.

"This is Lt. Commander Ficksit, my chief of engineering, and Lieutenant Rekkit, my tactical officer. And yes, everyone has made that joke already." Ficksit was a Grayson: short, wiry, with a squashed nose and Grayson's religion-tinged tendency to swear in only the most mild of euphemisms. Rekkit, on the other hand, was a San Martino, a world so large and heavy that oxygen levels on the surface were toxic. Only a few high plateaus could support human life. The heavy gravity consequently produced people squat, broad, and heavily muscled. Rekkit also had a reputation for taking on Marines for recreation, although he'd recently channelled that effort into learning savate in the gym rather than practicing in bars. His dossier said his real name was Raoul, but everyone called him Ralph. If there was a story there, Anna hadn't heard it.

The Queen gave Anna a quick grin, and the two of them moved on down the line, all the way to Ensign Robin, Anna's junior staff secretary and her youngest officer, who looked appropriately gobsmacked to be greeting a queen.

They moved on to dinner. Claire had prepared beef with a savory jus, roasted asparagus and sliced, roasted potatoes with gravy. Ensign Robin remembered to lead the opening toast to "The Queen", and Anna rose in response. "This is a great honor," she said. "Lowly light cruisers of the Royal Manticoran Navy don't get to host a queen every day. We hope that _Winterkiss_ is a good example of what our star kingdom can provide, and that the relationship between Manticore and Arendelle is a provident one."

"Here, here," Kristoff said, raising his glass at his cue. Even Sven and Olaf raised glasses at that.

"Thank you," Elsa said. "Your ship is beautiful, and my people are already envious of your artificial gravity. I pray we discover Arendelle has something to trade with Manticore, and that our relationship is a productful and provident one."

Dinner resumed. After a few minutes of considered eating, Elsa said, "I have one question, A- Captain."

"Yes, Your Highness?"

"_Winterkiss_ is not the sort of name I would expect on an... exploratory vessel."

"That's because _Winterkiss_ didn't start out as an exploratory vessel." Anna hesitated, trying to word it so that it didn't sound alarming. "She was launched as a very deep penetration first-strike cruiser. Manticore recently fought a war with its neighbor, and we needed to innovate our military mix. _Winterkiss_ was one of those. She was never used in her designed role, and after the war she was scheduled to be mothballed. Then the Lynx II Terminus was discovered. _Winterkiss_, which had already been gutted of most of her offensive arms, was refit with all sorts of sensors and exploratory gear instead. She received a larger boat bay and more bunkerage, too. The idea was that if she ended up five hundred light years away from Manticore and couldn't find the way home, at least she'll be able to sail home under her own power."

"I see. So your ship is unarmed?"

"Oh, I wouldn't say that. She has a few missile bays remaining, plus a lot of countermissle space, and there was no need to remove her point defenses. I don't think the RMN would ever field a ship that couldn't defend herself. Even hospital ships have defense arrays. I hope we never have to engage in any sort of battle while we're here, your highness."

Dinner had been scheduled early, as Elsa was due to go over to _Anchor_ afterward. It ended on a high note, with Claire working some of the local chocolates into an exquisite whipped glaceau.

"How will we all fit into the elevators?" Anna asked. It looked a bit silly, all of them trooping down to the boat bay together after dinner: Anna and Kristoff, the two treecats, Ensign Robin at their heels, proceeding Queen Elsa and her royal secretary Kai, as well as her three security officers.

"Take shifts," Kristoff said. "We'll go up in one, then you lead Queen Elsa and two armsmen up in the second."

"Right," Anna said. It was a small personnel lift, one of the RMN's newest indulgences for good captains, and Anna appreciated it, but it barely had room for four. She spent the ride uncomfortably close to Elsa. "Sorry," she said.

"There is nothing to apologize for, Captain," Elsa said. Anna could swear she heard her own name in the way Elsa said 'Captain.' She could have listened to Elsa's voice for... for a long time. "I have learned that we must all make allowances for necessity."

When they got off, the shuttlecraft was waiting on the other side of the scarlet warning line. Elsa turned and said, "Thank you for your hospitality, Captain." Her eyes sparkled. "I hope we have a chance to talk at length again. Soon?"

"I do too, Your Majesty." She reached out a hand, and if Elsa's green-gloved clasp in response lasted a little too long, Anna wasn't prepared to judge. "Take care of my executive. I need him back."

Elsa laughed in a tossed-off manner. "I'm sure you do. We'll bring him back in one piece. Ready, Commander Bjorgmann?"

"Whenever you are, Your Majesty." Anna grinned. Kristoff's usual tone of voice was one shade south of insolent, but this time he sounded earnest. Oddly, she'd never heard him actually _be_ insolent, except perhaps with Sven.

"Let's go, then." Captain Calhoun led Elsa across the barrier, and then guided her with expert kicks toward the waiting shuttlecraft. Anna tried not to look up Elsa's skirt as they crossed, and she mostly succeeded. _Captain, you have to get your hormones under control_.

Anna returned to the bridge and watched the agonizingly slow progress of the shuttle on the holosphere. "Call Dr. Fitzhubert. I want him to keep a close eye on... everything."

"Aye, Ma'am."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's notes go at the bottom, ya?<strong>

Sorry about how short this one is. I'm still making it up as I go along. There's a little mischief going on, naturally, a game of "Where is that character from?" Some of them are purely made up, but you'll have to guess who along the way. Some of them are just obvious: _Of course_ Felix would be a Grayson, and _of course_ Ralph would be from San Martin, and _of course_ Vanellope would be a small ships handler who learned her piloting from Scotty Tremaine and shared a gum-chewing habit with Susan Hibson.

If my outline holds, in future chapters there'll be frozen bodies, very broken hearts, magic glowing hair, and... uh... lesbian sheep.


	6. The Bridge

Naylia runs through Asgard, her feet carrying her along the cobblestone road inlaid with glittering flakes of silver, gold, and diamond. She passes her favorite fountain, the broad one with the tile mosaic depicting a gaily colored orange octopus swimming in a bright blue sea. A single arc of water shoots up from the edge of the fountain to cross three-quarters of the broad, five-meter wide circle and fall into the water, creating ripples that seemed to animate the beast without ever obscuring it.

She reaches the palace, a magnificent construction of columns and gold, the two lions that guard its gates turning their majestic golden heads to watch her as she passes. "What is the matter?" she demands as she enteres.

Vili bows as she enters. Her clothes transform around her, enrobing her in the white of her office, the staff of her authority appearing in her hand. "My Queen, it is as bad as we had feared. The Muspeli have acquired a dragon."

"A dragon?" Naylia feels stunned. In all the years she's been in Asgard, the dragons have belonged to Asgard. The great beasts live under the city, and if the night is very quiet and the wind is still, one can hear them snoring in the deep and stony distance. She had ridden them a few times, but flight wasn't the sort of thrill for which she had chosen to live in Asgard. It was the quiet, the food, and the peace of the libraries that she loved. The people of Asgard were charming and humane.

The universe is still prone to mischief. She's dealt with an earthquake a decade ago, and storms swept through once every other year or so, just to keep things interesting. And that sea monster last year had a been a fun distraction.

"What's the recommended course of action?"

Vili gestures toward Ve. Her Commander of Civil Authority says, "My Queen, the best course of event is to unleash as many dragons as we can awaken to kill the alien."

"Kill?" Naylia is horrified. The dragons had succeeded in harrying and driving off the sea monster. They hadn't had to kill it. "Is that necessary?"

"It must be," Ve says. "There is a strong risk of sacrifice. Many of the dragons may not come back." He looks determined, and not distressed at all. Something is wrong. "We need your decision quickly, your highness. There isn't time."

"There is always time," she argues. Maybe that's what's in play. The dragons unbalance the universe. The universe has figured that out and wants to take them away.

"Not this time! A dragon in the hands of the Muspeli could wreak havoc. If they choose to unleash it now, it could destroy all of Asgard!"

Naylia doesn't understand that. Nor does she like it. The universe is off kilter. But the game has rules, and so she plays. "Fine. If the threat is that dire, have your men unleash the dragons." Maybe it's just for a light show. She hopes it's just for the light show.

Ve bows. "It will be done."

"And find me Heimdall! He and I are going to have _words_."

* * *

><p>Duke is listening to the city. He has listened to it for centuries, heard the voies as the superheroes do their business. Blackjacks and Jokers outpace each other down on the streets below, and in the air Supermen and Spidermen zoom past in different generations of tights and capes, some with the yellow pants on, some with the black.<p>

Duke started out here as a barbarian, an overmuscled freak with an axe and an attitude. He had traded in the axe for a couple of rings of power, a kind of Green-Lantern-meets-Mandarin mix that goes well with his blow-dried hair and a comfortably fitted pin-striped suit draped over his still-barbaric frame. He's stopped playing for keeps and now just wants to have fun with the crazy, hazy world of Gothamopolis. It's a bad mix of everything and he knows it, but in the daytime the restaurants are fantastic.

He feels a wind at his back. He knows who it is, turns and looks. The man standing behind him is small and pale and youthful and beautiful. His long hair streams behind him, his smile so lovely Duke already wants to kiss him. Angel used to run with this blond-furred gorilla chick, but it turned out guys are more his thing and so now he's with Duke, who's mostly hairless but also kinda gorilla-shaped. "Up for a game tonight?" Angel asks.

"What kind?" Duke asks, his deep voice grating. He'd been going for sexy. His voice doesn't quite make it.

"I hear there's an alien incursion underway."

"Huh," Duke says. He can stand a little play before the play. "Hadn't heard that."

"You aren't paying attention." Angel points upward. Duke's eyes follow and he finds himself staring into a horde already blocking out the atmosphere. Tonight's game is black-clad supersoldiers on surfboards all kitted in armor and dripping with guns, ready for mayhem. "That doesn't look challenging."

"We'll find out," Angel say. "Race ya!" He kneels downward and suddenly launches himself into the air, his wings spreading out like a kestrel's, barely moving even as he rockets upward. The laws of physics don't apply in Gothamopolis the way they do elsewhere.

Duke points his hands at the ground and is launched into the air by his ring of flight courtesy of the Legion. He can't catch Angel, but that doesn't matter. He'll catch up. Angel is already among the supersoldiers, bouncing off them like a pinball, knocking them off their surfboards to fall to their deaths.

Then the impossible happens. The soldiers get a bead on Angel and one of them manages to put a bullet through his head. Brains spray into the atmosphere, a fine mist of that part of Angel that truly loved Duke.

Duke stares in a horror he's never felt before. The universe couldn't do this to him. It wouldn't! It just had. He puts his fists in front of himself, willing to full power two rings he has never used in conjunction. "I am going to kill you all!" he shouts. The rings are unleashed. Beams of light flicker from Duke's fists. Ichor rains from the sky.

* * *

><p>In sixty-three different worlds, similar battles are enjoined, and similar decisions are made. The votes are tallied, but the conclusion was never in doubt.<p>

Deep inside what was once the _Arendelle Colony Mission Personnel Module Number Two_, power is applied to hardware that hasn't seen activatation in centuries. Codes are unlocked. Signals are sent. Hell is unleashed.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's comments go at the bottom, ya?<strong> God, I'm so late with this! I'm so sorry. And I'm not even sure it makes sense. The next episode starts an arc of messing up our heroine's lives! It does! And it has callbacks! So stay with me, I'll try to be good.


	7. Fire

The first 2400 kilometers of Arendelle's Space Elevator were forty meters thick, suitable to hauling the heavy lift elevator to low orbit. Once clear of atmosphere fusion drives could quickly give any ship orbital velocity and the materials platform there had accelerators to do just that. The rest of it, all 34000 kilometers, was only four meters across. It didn't have to be heavy, just strong enough to hold up the rest of the Elevator and make access to space possible. At the very end of that cable lay _Anchor_, the furthest reach of Elsa's domain, a lonely maintenance outpost that looked out to the rest of the universe.

Kristoff thought it was still a pretty nice place.

Sven definitely enjoyed the lack of gravity. He didn't enjoy the skinsuit, at least not with its "plumbing" adapter, but he loved zero-g, especially since he had complete control of the reaction thrusters that let him zip around the station with ease. He made that delighted weird honking sound he emitted when he was happy. Kristoff watched him go with a wave. "Don't get lost, Sven. Stick to the party."

_Anchor_ was a marvel of engineering the likes of which Manticore had long ago abandoned. Arendelle had gone their own way, working with zero-g materials sciences to create perfect femtotech boron-fullerene hybrids with tensile strengths that bordered on miraculous, and Kristoff had said so.

"Thank you," Commander Crosby had said with complete sincerity. "If we begin trading with Manticore, might I assume that you have had your own progress in the materials department?"

That was a common theme of every conversation. "If-or-when we begin trading with Manticore..." These people were anxious to be trade partners, to get to know the greater universe. This was no hidden colony put away to avoid the rest of humanity, as Grayson had been. Arendelle had meant to be a part of human space. It had just gotten lost somewhere along the way.

Anna and Kristoff had actually found Arendelle's founding in _Winterkiss's_ library. The Arendelle TransEuro Colonial Corporation had sponsored one of the very earliest slower-than-light sleeper convoys, a luxurious high-automation effort mostly for upper-class Terrans who had the prescience to foresee the coming economic catastrophe. Their leader had been Doctor Josef Arendelle, a multinational financier who had invested heavily in Earth's first successful space elevator. Four ships had broken out of Mars orbit in 241PD and disappeared into the void, headed for the general direction of Lynx. How they had accidentally stumbled upon a wormhole, much less navigated it safely without a modern starship's instrumentation, still remained a great mystery.

Kristoff had made reassuring noises at all the inquiries. At least he hoped so. He'd watched Elsa out of the corner of his eye, and he liked what he saw, at least professionally. She made a good enough Queen when she wasn't being so twitchy, and maybe he could see what was making Anna act so twitterpated around her. It wasn't a healthy state of mind; she had a boyfriend back home, apparently getting serious. Kristoff had met Hans and didn't understand the attraction. He thought Hans was a bit of an arrogant ass himself, but then Kristoff wasn't a noble and didn't share the nobility's odd ideas about effective marriages.

Kristoff snorted. "Effective" wasn't what Anna wanted. She was romantic to her core. Kristoff had always been more than content to have Sven at his side. He didn't want, or need, romantic entanglements. If he had to choose, he'd have said he was interested in women, but he just didn't have that drive that so many of his peers seemed to have. It just didn't seem to matter to him, much to the eternal regret of his parents.

So what was it about Elsa that made Anna get so flustered and talky? She'd always been talky, rambling on and on when her mind got going, almost as if she were afraid the air might feel uncomfortable being empty and naked of words, but whenever the topic of Arendelle's Queen came around, Anna spoke even faster and more circuitously, trying hard to address the subject and avoid it at the same time.

Sven chittered at him, snarling slightly. Kristoff scowled. "Stop it, Sven. You know I can't understand you when you talk like that."

Sven signed something, and Kristoff nodded. "She needs friends, Sven." Sven gave him a look. "All right, she needs more. This is the wrong place-"

"Is something wrong, Commander?" Captain Calhoun asked.

"No. Me and my buddy here are having a... discussion."

Sven's look deepened. "We'll talk about this later, okay?" Sven's honking reply was almost an obscenity before he jetted down the hallway.

"He is a creature of few words, which like snowflakes the wind carries away. Come on, Commander. Dawdling time is over."

"Uh, yes. Ma'am."

He floated down a main corridor, spotting one of the Queen's other security guards. He was guided into the first truly luxurious room he had seen on the otherwise spartan _Anchor_. Even with a travel time measured in days, _Anchor_ was that furthest outpost of Arendelle and it did get the odd, adventuresome tourist. The officer in charge had even boasted of a waiting list. There was a tiny bed-and-breakfast penthouse garden with a domed view of half the universe, the half that faced away from Arendelle. The last couple to visit were currently on their way down, so Elsa's party had the garden to themselves. The plants were all bedded down with a fine mesh netting that also kept the moisture in with the soil. It actually looked like a garden with gravity, flowers and shrubs reaching up to Arendelle's sun, clearly visible through the LCD-darkened glass of half the dome. The illusion lasted only as long as he didn't glance at the other visitors floating around the hexagonal arrangement of guide ropes, or examine the stars of the greater universe clear and untwinkling in the other half of the dome. The air of the garden smelled a heady mix of recycled air perfumed with roses and gardenias. "Wow," Kristoff breathed.

Calhoun slammed past him, flying into the room. "Code Nine!" she shouted.

The other guard stiffened. "Your majesty- " He stopped, and so did Calhoun. Commander Buzz said, "We have nowhere to go."

"The shuttle?" Calhoun asked. "We can make it to the shuttle."

Buzz shook his head. "Not from here. Not in time."

"What is it, Captain?" Elsa demanded, appearing in the hatchway.

Calhoun looked stricken. "Your majesty, I'm sorry. We... ASTC is reporting that we've lost control of the solar laser platforms. They're turning toward us."

* * *

><p>"They what?" Anna said.<p>

"All communication with _Anchor_ just stopped, Captain!"

"Captain DuVar!" A new voice broke through her comm channels.

Anna looked down at the civilian feed on her tactical display. "Not now, Flynn. I'm busy."

"Then you'll want to know this, Captain!" His image split. "The laser platforms in solar orbit are turning toward Arendelle. They're preparing to fire."

"What?" Anna stared at the display. "Is there any way to stop them? Could they be taking hostages?"

"Captain, these aren't FTL transmissions. Those lasers could have fired as long ago as eight minutes and there isn't a thing we could do about it. Well, not eight minutes, the beams would be here already. But you can't take hostages in situations like this. The timing doesn't work. If those things are being aimed, they are going to be fired. They may have already been fired."

Anna stared at the screen, trying to find a way around Flynn's reasoning. He wasn't trained as a sailor, but he understood the physics all right. A beam of light couldn't be recalled like a missile. Kristoff and Sven were on _Anchor_. Elsa was on _Anchor_. That settled it. "Lieutenant Ibanez, make like an eclipse. Plot a course that'll put the belly wedge between the sun and _Anchor_, and execute when you have it."

"Aye, Ma'am!" Carmen Ibanez grinned. She treated _Winterkiss_ the way VonSchweets treated small craft: a hot-shot with a toy. Anna had seen her maneuvering skills and trusted her to get it right the first time. Without hesitation or permission, _Winterkiss_ shot out of its orbit and streaked downward toward _Anchor_ at almost 250Gs, turning over only eleven seconds later, coming to a halt twelve seconds after that.

"Raise _Anchor_, if you can," Anna said. "Let them know we're here." She punched a button on the arm of her chair. "Engineering."

"Captain?"

"Felix, we might be about to take the worst laserhead in history. Can they hit us? Can we take it?"

She heard Felix audibly swallow. "Can they hit us? Ma'am, they routinely hit a 3 kilometer-wide target at a distance of a _light year_. They'll hit anything they want at eight light-minutes. But I think we could survive it on the belly," he said. "Doctor Fitzhubert showed me the numbers. It'll be a near thing, but by golly I think we can take it. Once."

"Once?"

"The capacitors will have to take some of the bleed, Ma'am, and there's no guarantee they'll all survive. We'll probably have to take time to repair them all between blasts. Arendelle told me all about how they work, they're very proud of their achievements. They take time to recharge and they have limited aim rate capability. Arendelle's starships don't have independent maneuvering, after all, so it's not like they need to be quick on the helm. If we have to take a second hit, Ma'am, I suggest we think of something else."

"Got it. Thanks, Felix."

"I'll do what I can."

* * *

><p>"What is God's name is that?" Captain Calhoun said, looking at the place where the sun <em>had<em> been. Now it was a deep, black hole, and long lines of light like frozen meteor streaks colored the universe all around it.

"Anna, no!" Kristoff said. He raised his wristcomm to his lips. "_Winterkiss_, come in, _Winterkiss_."

"Commander!" Anna's voice sounded relieved.

"Captain, what are you doing?"

"Saving your life."

"You could die!"

The tinny chuckle told him he shouldn't even bother. "Felix says we probably won't. And Felix knows his ship. You know this ship. You know we'll probably take it."

Anna was more nervous that she was willing to admit. "Probably isn't great odds, Captain."

"Then consider this some kind of crazy trust exercise in BuShips."

Kristoff started to reply, but the universe interrupted him.

Tactical alarms with nowhere to direct their fury screamed uselessly aboard _Winterkiss's_ bridge before Lieutenant Rekkit shut them down with one bulky finger to his controls. "Sorry," he muttered.

Nobody heard him. They were staring at the engineering displays already needling into the red. There were hundreds of load-bearing capacitors all up and down the reinforced spine of _Winterkiss_ reporting heavy strains. The firing time for a single laser was barely three minutes. The belly bands of a hyper-capable warship were supposed to be impenetrable to even the worst laser fire; it was supposed to bleed off the sides in a spray of photons whipped to even higher energies by the fusion-powered gravitic skew of a ship's wedge. Belly bands shrugged off nuclear-pumped laser heads. But this wasn't a weapon of war, this was a laser of an entirely different caliber. Violet beams slammed into _Winterkiss_ and sprayed across her. For two kilometers to either side of _Winterkiss_, four trapezoidal sheets of immense gravitational gradient sheered the power of the laser up and away like some strange cosmic mirror.

Anna heard the voice of damage control as reports of fires and explosions echoed through her ship. Those were merely secondary damage from components of the ship doing too much, taking too much. It was her ship, and those were her crew. The beam hadn't gotten though, and Felix had warned people to stay away from the buffering components, but there would be wounded. There might even be dead. Anna's teeth hurt, and she forced her clenched jaw to relax. "Hold steady, Carmen," she said.

"Aye, Ma'am. Holding steady."

Even _Winterkiss's_ gravitic nodes weren't enough to track everything. The beam cut diagonally across the upper wedge in less than fifteen seconds in a fast, linear streak for the bulk of its passage, and when it reached the bottom of the wedge it was free to space once more. Anna had saved _Anchor_, but now the beam cut down and traversed the Elevator directly, deliberately targeting a spot two-thirds of its length. One-third of the Elevator started to float away. The rest began an agonizingly slow collapse.

"Beam clear. Ma'am, it's _Anchor_!"

* * *

><p>On <em>Anchor<em>, Captain Calhoun was hovering near Elsa, who had curled up into a fetal position. "Your majesty, we have radio." Elsa looked up, her eyes hollow. "You have to do something."

"Me?"

Calhoun eased closer to Elsa and said softly, "Your majesty. The gloves."

Elsa looked down at her hands. "I can't." Calhoun only stared at her. "I can't!"

"Your Majesty, you have to. Or they will fire again. It only takes a few hours. And I don't know if Captain DuVar's ship can take a second hit. I don't know if they survived the first one."

Elsa's head whipped up to where she thought she'd seen Anna's ship. "Anna?" Something was still there, but it was no longer just a black hole in space. It was glowing, as if it had absorbed all the light thrown at it and was bleeding it off in controlled amounts. Maybe that's exactly what it was doing.

The Manticorans had risked their lives to save her. _Anna_ had risked her life, and the lives of everyone aboard _Winterkiss_, to save her. Captain DuVar, beautiful, lovely _Anna_, who had only yesterday become the one friend Elsa had who... who could _leave_. Trembling, she reached down and pulled off her gloves.

Her hands looked normal, but suddenly the world became brighter, took on a sheen of meaning and purpose as a second suite of data poured into her mind. Tenuously, trembling, she reached through _Anchor's_ communications systems, communicated with the world. Everything on Arendelle greeted her touch with greedy eagerness. Everything bent to her will. Everything said they had missed her touch, would give her power, give her pleasure, if only she would give them meaning in return. She could rule all of Arendelle with the power restrained within her hands. Her power, her _father's power_, her _family power_.

_Stop. I'm doing this for Anna. No, I'm doing this for Arendelle._ There was more than one cache, more than one base station, more than one satellite. There had to be redundancies. With a simple thought, she sent a command. _Forgive me, Corona. Protocol demands this_.

She pulled the gloves back on hurriedly. That world, the one where her power spoke to her, disappeared into the background again, and Elsa curled up gratefully as it did.

"My Queen!" Hands were touching her person. Tamora's hands. Tamora turned her over. In times of crisis, medical and security personnel were allowed. They were the only ones who were allowed. "Are you all right?"

Elsa shook her head, and tears coursed over her temples and into her hair. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Anna looked up an the main display to watch in horror as the space station, now cut loose from its mooring, began floating away. "Metzinger, get me the XO, _now_!"

She was relieved when she heard Kristoff's voice over the radio. "Captain?"

"Kristoff! What's your situation? How's Elsa?"

"We're alive. I wouldn't say we're fine, but we're, uh, we have power, food and water. There's a very slow tumble. Did they... did they cut it?"

"Yes."

"Damn." His voice receded into the distance as he shouted to someone else. "Commander Crosby! _Winterkiss_ is confirming that the Elevator is cut."

A distant voice shouted, "Shit. Understood."

Anna said, "Kristoff, we're coming for you."

Lieutenant Rekkit said, "Uh, ma'am. You want to see this." She nodded, and he touched a button on his console. The screen came to life.

The Elevator was disintegrating. Self-destruct charges were going off all along its length, blowing it into pieces sufficiently small to disintegrate in the atmosphere. Anna cringed inside. The Elevator was a monumental achievement, an engineering masterpiece and Arendelle's only access into space. Without it, they were at the mercy of chemical rockets. Their space-based personnel couldn't go home; their groundside personnel couldn't go up.

That first two hundred kilometers of the Elevator couldn't self-destruct; it was the thickest part, the base that reached above the atmosphere, the segment that led to Low Orbit One, where it was safe to light off fusion drives and avoid falling back into the atmosphere, and nuking it would have done more damage than letting it fall. It was falling toward Arendelle. Each kilometer was several kilotons of densely-woven borocarbon fiber strong enough to survive re-entry.

The base fell with a mighty crash, devastating everything in its path and kicking up a dust storm that would linger for years. Every farm town, every agricultural center, every maintenance outpost within a blast zone eight hundred kilometers long and five hundred kilometers on a side was destroyed. Almost a quarter of Arendelle's wheat and corn production was wiped out in less than an hour. Thousands were killed.

Anna could only watch the devastation unfold. She turned to her tractor tactical station. "Vanellope, once we've put _Anchor_ into a safe orbit I want you to take the pinnace and evacuate all non-essential personnel. We'll ferry everyone we can groundside as soon as possible." She punched a familiar button. "Felix, what's our status?"

"We won't be able to do that again, Ma'am. That beam overloaded several major breakers and capacitors. We have casualties, Ma'am, but I don't think any of them are fatal." Felix sounded worried. Anna waited for the worst. "We've lost our Warsharski sails, Ma'am."

"Permanently?"

"I think so, Ma'am. The capacitors for forward Alpha Ring number two were right next to the Warsharski coil, and they blew hard enough to destroy the containment vessel."

"Great. Just great." Without her sails, Anna would be forced to wait until Manticore sent a second expedition out to find her. She could theoretically go into hyper but without the sails she couldn't detect the dangerous gravity waves that might shred a ship in seconds, and in the absolutely uncharted and probably dangerous space between two binary stars and an anomalous brown dwarf, the last thing she wanted was to risk it. She couldn't go through a wormhole junction at all.

"Thanks, Felix. You kept us alive. Do what you can. I'll call you back." She toggled another station. "DC, tell me about our wounded."

"Six injured, no deaths, Captain," came the damage control officer's report. "Lieutenant Keane is going to lose his leg, but Doctor Whelan says he's on the regen list."

"And the others?" Anna said softly.

"Burns, mostly. Lt. Commander Dutta took it to the back of the head, and she's on the no-regen list. Some concussion but nothing major. Doc reports she'll live, but there'll be reconstructive surgery, and external transplantation therapy to grow her hair back."

"Understood." She looked up, and Olaf was staring back at her. She gathered him in her arms and held him, still eschewing the command chair she almost never sat in. "But Arendelle..." In Rekkit's tactical display, the Elevator was still crashing to the ground with such agonizing slowness Anna felt surely, _surely_ there was something she could do. But there wasn't. It would take hours to complete its devastation, and there was nothing Anna or anyone else could do to stop fourteen megatons of destruction from scarring the equator of Arendelle forever. "All those people."

Anna listened as the toll rolled in. Groundside reports of wreck and ruin tugged at her, and she tried to steady herself. Olaf hopped up onto the chair and looked at her. She gave him a nod. "Captain," Lieutenant Metzinger said, "Boat Bay One reports Queen Elsa and party on board."

"Good," Anna said. "Is the XO among them?" He nodded. "Get him up here."

"Captain!"

"Talk to me, Mr. Rekkit."

"Incoming fire, Ma'am! Large slugs. They look unguided. They're headed for the solettas!"

Anna gulped. Arendelle's solettas were vast, often 20 kilometers across, but they were nothing more than a strong, light framework across which stretched vast circular sheets of reflective mylar. They doubled the sunlight that reached each duchy. Without that sunlight, the city-states of Arendelle would be frozen wastelands. They were another marvel of colonial engineering, and she couldn't allow them to be destroyed. "Point of origin? ETA?"

"Arendelle's moon. ETA, six minutes."

Anna did some numbers in her head. Those slugs weren't moving very fast, not for a Queen's vessel. "Carmen, do we need to do anything to intercept?"

"We could be someplace further out, for ASTC's comfort."

"Do it." Although no one on the ship felt a thing, on the big screen the stars turned as the _Winterkiss_ rolled to meet the new fire. "Ralph, get on a solution. Not one of those slugs hits home, you got me?"

"Aye aye, Captain." Anna shot him a look but chose not to interrupt. Ralph's tendency to descend to an almost piratical San Martino accent at moments of stress bordered on the unprofessional, but the man had been a member of the resistance during San Martin's occupation by the People's Republic of Haven. For a rebel, insubordination was just a game to be played. "Ready."

"Fire!"

Coherent laser light flickered out from _Winterkiss_. Anna's ship wasn't meant to go into combat, but the anti-missile systems onboard were surely the equal of unguided rocks. Each slug, little more than a machined barrel of ore that in better days would have been destined for one of Arendelle's orbital refineries, disappeared under the withering fire.

The door to the bridge opened as Anna took in the battle reports. She saw Kristoff take up his station. Behind him, Elsa and Calhoun tumbled onto the bridge. Elsa looked wrecked, but Anna was glad to see her. So much she almost ran to the other woman before she remembered her place. "Your Majesty, you shouldn't..."

"I invited them," Kristoff said. "There's no place safer in the galaxy right now than this bridge."

"Oh." Anna stood upright, straightening the top of her uniform. "Good point. Welcome, then, your Majesty, Captain Calhoun." Elsa nodded. "Did Buzz come with you?"

Calhoun growled, "Yeah, he went and found Doctor Flynn."

"Oh, good. Comm, get me Flynn." He nodded. "Flynn, you and Buzz need to put your heads together. Is there any way anyone other than Vesselton could have fired those slugs from Arendelle's moon?"

"Not that I can think of," said the now familiar voice of Adolph Buzz. "Someone would have to break through two cryptosystems to make that possible."

This wasn't her war, but she had an enemy. The rules of engagement in peacetime defined a box around a starship, and any aggressive fire within that box gave the captain licence to return fire and neutralize the threat to her vessel. That box was far larger than anyone on Arendelle would have thought reasonable, but no ship on Arendelle remotely pulled tens, much less hundreds, of Gs of acceleration. A Queen's ship did. "Carmen. Direct course for Vesselton. Eighty-percent power with a zero-zero intercept. Time?"

Lieutenant Ibanez didn't hesitate. She had those numbers ready. "Eighteen minutes."

"Execute!" She turned to Calhoun. "One way or another, we're going to get to the bottom of this."

* * *

><p><strong>AN go at the bottom, ya?** See, I learned something. "A/N." Back to the main plot, where we get our lovely twosome back into close quarters with each other, politically at least, and embroil them in a big problem, ya. Frankly, I have no idea where this is going, but at least this chapter makes more sense.

And holy cow, people, I actually got this one posted _on time!_ Will wonders never cease? Anyway, I have an outline for the next couple of chapters, up through about chapter 12 I think. You folks are gonna hate chapter 12.


	8. Fragile as an Icicle

Anna should have returned to Arendelle and dropped Elsa off. As she hadn't, Elsa had ensconced herself in Anna's smallest conference room and was trying to run the groundside disaster from two light-seconds away. Anna told herself that Arendelle's prime minister had all the authority he needed to handle the emergency, and Elsa was safest on the fastest mobile platform in the solar system, not to mention the one with the best shields, armor, and weapons. She told herself that, and she didn't believe it. She just wanted the woman close right now. Wanted to make sure she was being cared for, wanted to keep her away from the horror that awaited her when she got groundside.

The bridge felt empty and quiet. Twenty minutes shouldn't have felt so long. Only the quiet hum of the ship's life support and the occasional beep of attention distracted her. "Anything?" she asked Lieutenant Metzinger.

"Nothing, Captain. Not a signal from the Vessel since we started."

"They have to know we're on our way. They have to respond somehow. Don't they, Major?"

Buzz stroked his amazing chin. The temporary bump in rank had been explained to him as a courtesy of RMN starships, a way of making sure there really was only one person on the bridge who answered to the call of "captain." "I don't know, Captain DuVar. There hasn't been real-time communication with them in decades, I believe. It's always packeted, often just text. The messages we do get from them seem a bit... off. Animated, if you understand."

"Orbital insertion at Agdar in five minutes." Lieutnenat Ibanez' voice called from her station.

As Arendelle's only moon, Agdar was nothing to look at. Smaller than Luna or Thorson, but also significantly more dense, it was a classically battered reddish-yellow ball of rock. Tactical wasn't tagging any significant activity down there at all.

On the main viewscreen, the Vessel was growing. It was an elongated latticework of white-painted frames holding together an odd assortment of fattened cylinders. Tactical painted the display with best guesses as to what each equipment piece was.

"Ingresses here, here, and here," she heard Buzz say as he pointed at a small display next to Rekkit's station. "Still no communications, though. This is very strange."

"Ralph, call Major Camran to your station. If they won't talk to us, we're going to have a boarding party."

"Yes, Ma'am."

* * *

><p>Elsa joined Anna on the bridge as they watched Buzz and four of <em>Winterkiss's<em> marines, including Major Camran, enter what seemed to be the largest and most central construction on the Vessel. Buzz had identified it as part of the original equipment, the crew's quarters. Heavily protected against radation poisoning and with multiple immediate power supplies, it seemed the best place to look for people.

Buzz kept up a monologue about what he was seeing that did not reassure Anna at all. "The construction has changed a lot from what was described in the original blueprints, and I've been through those in sim a thousand times," he muttered. "I shouldn't be surprised, but this is all very peculiar. Whoa, robot." His helmet camera focussed on a spindly multi-legged thing attached to the ceiling. It appeared to be using a static mop to dust. "This is where the main cabins were, but there's... huh." Buzz led her marines down a long corridor. He seemed much more at home in zero-G than her marines did, but he lived in it every day; they only practiced with it. "This corridor is a lot shorter than the simulation. The door is... locked. Well, this shouldn't be too hard."

Anna could only hear the sounds as he monkeyed with the controls. "Viola." His helmet cam shot up into a room. "What in the blazes is... Great God. Captain, I think we've found the crew."

* * *

><p>"That has to be the creepiest ship I've ever been on," Flynn said. "Not that I've been on many creepy ships, but that one takes the cake." Anna was in full agreement. One or two pirate vessels in her experience had defined the term "creepy" for her, but Vesselton took creepy to an entirely different plane.<p>

Elsa sat at the other end of the conference room, her elbows on the table, burying her head in her arms. Flynn, Anna, Kristoff, Buzz, and several other scientists and engineers watched her.

Anna struggled to keep her feeling professional and controlled. It was clear the woman was hurting, and possibly out of her depth. Anna had seen people shocked out of their depth before and her native empathy, much enhanced by her years with Olaf, made her ache to reach out and embrace the amazing blonde. She resorted to, "Your Majesty?"

"They're mad. They're all mad over there. Not a single one of them believed I was here. They all interpreted me through... whatever it was they were doing. They're stuck in simulations, virtual realities, video games! We've been negotiating with their automatic response system for fifty years?" She looked up. If she'd looked tired before, now the term "harried" didn't begin to describe her. "I knew their physical condition had deteriorated, it had to have after centuries, but I couldn't imagine they'd let their mental condition fall so far. I thought they'd be more like The Mother."

"Who?" Anna said.

"The Mother. Captain Gothel. She's on Corona."

"The captain of the colony expedition is still _alive_?" Anna said.

Elsa nodded. She pointed vaguely behind herself, as if she could see The Vessel through the ship's hull. "The people on the Vessel were her crew, Captain. If they're still alive- if you can call that living- she can be as well. But I understand that she's still walking around, talking with my family, advising them. She's been a confident to four generations of my family's branch over there. My cousin speaks fondly of her."

"Captain," Flynn said, "There's no reason to believe the Vessel here, and what remains of the crew on Corona, took the same path, culturally. Maybe Corona was more welcoming than the original colonists. The three-way split between Arendelle, the Vessel, and those who went off to Corona happened before the agro-plague and the Constitution of Monarchy." Anna nodded. "Anyway, Buzz has control of the transmission system, at least. He's been tickling the logs to see if he can find out what happened." Flynn sat back, his legs crossed. "We know about the crew. But what about the girl?"

Anna made a face. The 'girl' was the least significant of their problems, but for some reason everyone else had fixated on her. Probably because the rest of the crew were so damned disturbing.

Anna had thought Elsa joking when she described the crew as "brains in jars." She hadn't been. Of the eight thousand members of the crew who had chosen exile on The Vessel after the Arendelle Establishment of Monarchy, only 63 survived, and all of them were exactly as Elsa had described them. The jars were not, thankfully, transparent, or even really just jars; they were medically closed, surgically clean life-support systems with their own power sources, cleaning and recycling systems, and a nutritional reserve. Each system consisted of a coffin the size of a small two-man groundcar. "How did the crew end up like that?"

Buzz shrugged. "They always said they wanted to be freed of the limitations of the flesh. From time to time they would proseletyze, telling us down here of the wonderful freedom that came from giving up the limitations of our bodies. They never got any adherents that I know of." He looked down at his hands, as if seeing them in a new light. "I suspect that in their wait, their technology outstripped their maturity."

Flynn said. "If I didn't have to eat or sleep or chase after girls, what would I do with myself?" He sat back, legs crossed in a way to take up more space than was necessary, and ignored Elsa's flush. "Their brains were still telling them to do those things, or whatever their personal equivalents were. They went into simulations and... stayed there."

"But why won't they believe Queen Elsa when she tells them she's not part of the sim?" Anna said.

"Think of it this way, Captain. You know how to fly a fixed-wing, right?" Flynn said. Anna nodded. "You probably have something called competence transparency. Your tools are invisible, you no longer think about how to fly the aircraft. You just think about what you want it to do, and your hands and feet do the _how_ by themselves. You've built a lot of brain matter to do that and acheive that competence. The Vessel crew are still humans, with human brains. They've spent so long in simulations their brains have built up a massive collection of _hows_ about relating to that world. Eventually, it's all they know."

"And... the girl?"

"We have no idea. She's in cryo, not in sim. There are no marking or labels indicating who she might be, and the computers are refusing to acknowledge she even exists. Even though some of them are obviously caring for her. She even had a separate hydroponics fab attached to her side of the facility, where the algae is exposed to sunlight to filter any toxic buildups in her blood. It's amazing." Flynn shook his head. "There's some lost Terran tech there Manticore could really learn from."

Anna nodded. The survivors had been found in one long bay, serviced by clever machines that hovered over each station and monitored it. In a separate room, locked with a different keycode from the one Buzz had hacked to access the main medical bay, there had been a single cryogenic chamber, and inside it a young woman. Just using the equipment on board they had been able to show that her body and brain was similarly wired to the rest of the crew, but whereas they were hundreds of years old, the scanners had shown her to have been frozen somewhere around sixteen years of age.

"If she's remotely related to anyone on Arendelle, we'll figure out who she is," Buzz said. "Arendelle's tissue matching library is comprehensive and complete. Patients in cryo aren't really frozen, and cryofluids always have enough loose DNA to provide samples for testing."

That was good enough for Anna. "Your Majesty," Anna said. Elsa looked up. "We must get you back to Arendelle. I'm sorry, but you have a to-do list a light-year long, and so do I. Buzz, call ahead and assemble a team of... psychologists, I guess. And physicians. And engineers. And a long-duration habitable ship. We'll drag you all out to Agdar immediately, and then you can begin trying to get through to those crazies, and make sure they're not a threat to any of us anymore." She had spotted the wedding ring on his hand earlier. He wasn't her type but he was handsome in a lot of ways. "Sorry to keep you away from your wife."

"Good idea. I'll even sign off on it." He tapped his chin idly. "Oh, and it's husband, actually. Sure hope Oaken doesn't mind having to watch the kids by himself for too long." He noticed Anna's startlement and laughed. "Oh, it's all right, it's the less likely possibility."

Anna stared. Husband. Back on Manticore, homosexual encounters were regarded as just one of those things that happened, but nobody treated them with the significance and dignity of marriage. She'd even heard of church services for same-sex couples, in those churches that tolerated such things, but there was no civil recognition of them. Few even cared, but everyone understood that the purpose of marriage was to guarantee the lineage going forward, especially in the case of nobility and gentry. Regardless of one's personal indescretions, the obligation to family and line and heredity were everything. Biological heritage is the only wealth that matters. That distinction had always made Anna feel something like an outsider. Manticore had always been oh, so accepting of her consensual peccadilloes as long as she wasn't about to be derelict of duty.

Anna had always wondered if she would end up married to some nobleman for reasons of pure economy and heritage- someone like Hans, maybe- and then find romantic pleasures in her life elsewhere. It felt like a desolate compromise. When she'd told her father, he'd shrugged and said that life was compromise.

She shook herself. She had responsibilities, and tasks, an after-action report to dictate, a ship to repair. Now was not the time to be thinking about Elsa. _Elsa_? She hadn't been thinking about Elsa at all. She glanced at the Queen, who was now looking up at Captain Calhoun and talking, slowly, making plans. She turned back to Buzz and smiled. "Thank you. My crew will make sure you get about safely."

He grinned. "And thank you, Captain."

She glanced back toward the Queen again, trying to keep the roiling thoughts in her head from showing on her face. Elsa looked like a mess. Anna wanted to hug her, to hold her and tell her it would be all right. But that wasn't true, and hugging wasn't permitted. Anna only hoped that by the time they all got back to Arendelle, the proper courses of action would be underway.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's notes go at the bottom, ya?<strong> I warned you that this story could go off the rails quickly. I really don't have much idea what I'm doing, and try as I might to find ways to get Elsa and Anna into the same room with each other, there's this struggle to depict the Captain and the Queen realistically, doing their jobs as best they can.

A friend of mine who's one of those paid, professional types tells me that every romance stories has three characters: the romantics, who start off with very good reasons not to get romantically involved, and the _romance itself_, which lives between them and makes them say and do inappropriate things, the feelings which surface at just the wrong moments, the words that lead them into each other's arms. That's kinda what I'm aiming at for here, and I'm not sure it's working. But, hey, it's all in good fun.


	9. Fly By Night

Looking out the porthole, Anna watched the ground grow closer as Vanellope once again piloted the pinnace to a picture perfect landing at Arendelle's largest airport. She sighed. "I wonder if I'll have time go hiking."

"In the snow?" her seatmate said.

"Sure," she said, giving Flynn a broad grin. "I did it all the time in Iron Fjord. On Sphinx. We're not like you wimpy Manticorans who do nothing but lounge about in your tropical paradises."

"Hey!" Flynn said, holding up his hands to ward off the accusation. "That's fair, I suppose. You're hard-core, Captain."

"That's what Captains are for," Anna said. She felt a bit guilty leaving Kristoff to command _Winterkiss_, but someone had to and it was definitely her turn for a little shore leave. She'd been going non-stop for a week, getting Elsa home, getting Buzz's crew out to Vesselton, conversing with the materials specialists groundside and in orbit.

She worried about Arendelle, and Elsa. Arendelle's weather was going to undergo a massive reconfiguration, and unfortunately for the colder. With both the space elevator's heavy lift capability gone and The Vessel's material contributions to Arendelle's orbital economy on hold, building new solettas to increase surface temperatures in compensation was going to be much more difficult. _Winterkiss_ could help with personnel but raw materials lift was far beyond her heaviest shuttle's capabilities, nor was Anna authorized by her orders to help much in that regard.

In the meantime, one-fifth of her crew was on shore leave at any given time, given the freedom to visit Chantel and enjoy the pleasures that Arendelle offered. Anna hadn't begun to figure out the crediting system, only that one of Queen Elsa's secretaries had assured her that food, drink, clothes, hoteling and the like were being provided "at the pleasure of the Queen."

The very phrase made Anna blush inappropriately before she crammed those thoughts down. She had a life to return to, back on Manticore. Of a sort.

"You look like a women engaged in some deep philosophizing, Captain."

She regarded Flynn Fitzhubert with a half-grin and a shrug. "I guess I am." She did not want to discuss with him her discomfort with her Manticoran predicament. She definitely did not want to discuss the way she felt whenever she came within line of sight of Queen Elsa. "What _do_ you think of Arendelle, Flynn?"

"A man could get use to it," Flynn said. "It's a very luxurious place. Without a real war effort, they've had plenty of economic slack to deal with. Some of the efforts here have been wild. The progressive tax rate and the enforced multi-owner liquidity pools are both interesting. Both prevent the hoarding of money, so despite all the free cash floating around the velocity of money is still high enough to prevent recessions." He shook his head. "There's no reason Manticore couldn't be like this. None at all."

"Are you an economist along with everything else?" She smiled at him. He was very handsome in a relaxed and rakish sort of way that appealed deeply to her, but it was a learned rakishness, as if someone had taught him how to dress. His clothes fit him so well it came off as a kind of costume. She suspected he was the sort who hired a stylist once every five years to pick out a wardrobe for him.

"Oh, no. My PhD. is in materials science, you know, but I've always been a generalist. Jack of all trades, master of none. I'm very good at the math, and all these disciplines are math at the heart. I just need to load the terminology into my head with a few textbooks, make the right connections, and figure out who to talk to." He waved away the question. "If people think you're speak their language, they'll give you the answers you're looking for just like that." He snapped his fingers gently.

A chime rang out indicating they would be landing soon. Anna checked her and Flynn's belts. She'd left Olaf on board with _Winterkiss_. He'd nuzzled her and assured her she needed to get out on her own. She was grateful to him, as she'd have much less trouble being incognito without a treecat on her shoulders.

A taxi cab driven by a member of the palace staff in civilian clothing carried them into Chantel and dropped them off at a street in front of a hotel. Felix had been the only other officer on the shuttle and Anna had hoped he would join them, but he had an appointment at the Queen's College. The rest of the shuttle's passengers had been enlisted men and scientists she didn't know, so that left her with Flynn. He'd been fine company on the flight down. She preferred not to be alone at the moment.

"So," she said, "Even if you're not an economist, you seem to understand how it all works. How are we paying for our downtime?"

"We aren't. We don't have to. Look, money is how people figure out how to allocate and distribute stuff that an economy is short of. It's how we reward people for having a scarce something that other people want- skill, savvy, muscle, talent, beauty, whatever. But what if something so abundant it wouldn't make sense to allocate it?"

"Like what?"

"Like air." He gestured up the narrow street with its perfectly seamed cobblestones, its colorfully painted storefronts, its artfully snowed-over rooftops. "Or water." He gestured to the bottle of water she held in her gloved hand. "Or what it takes to create that, or transport it here, or recycle that when you're done with it. You only have to pay people for the one thing they don't want to spend: their time. Someone has to be the last check, and the holder of the responsibility, over the automation. Those people get rewarded in what Arendelle calls _real_ money. But that," he said, pointing to the water bottle, "can be bought with cash. Which isn't real money."

"What is real money, then?"

"Money you can buy real estate with. Land. Material capital. Mineral or forest or water rights. The time of other human beings. Oh, and there's one other kind of money they have here. _Interstellar money_, which is how they exchange value with Corona over the radio, to negotiate what goes into their starships and what its value will be when it arrives. Because the value of real estate fluctuates at a slow pace- say annually- but the value of interstellar trade is really slow, 22 years slow."

They walked up the street. Anna took a deep breath and smelled coffee coming from a dark-green shop ahead of them. When they reached it, it looked like a cozy cafe. "Stop here?" she said.

"Anything the lady likes," Flynn said, making a little bow and gesture toward the door. Anna giggled.

Inside reminded of Anna of every coffee shop she'd ever been in, from the hissing espresso machine that looked like a cross between a chrome grasshopper and a gleaming locomotive, to the tiny tables with men and women reading, writing in notebooks, hammering away at clamshell computers of various sizes, or looking into each other's eyes with fondness. One couple in the corner was clearly and blatantly into some new stage of romance, unable to keep their hands off each other as they gazed across the table. Anna sighed and turned away. Young love was supposed to feel like that. What wasn't fair was how love at fifty didn't feel that way. "Hey," Flynn said, his voice softening. "You're fading out. He asked what you want."

"Oh!" Anna said. "Sorry. Can you make a mocha?" The man behind the counter, an older man with a shock of white hair, nodded. "One, please. With whipped cream. And sprinkles if you've got 'em."

"Anything for the pretty lady," the barista said, his accent heavy.

When they had their drinks, Flynn and Anna took a table near the window. Chantel may have been deep into late winter but the streets were remarkably clear of snow. People walked back and forth, a panoply of humanity. Like Manticore, the most common skin color was a simple light brown similar to Anna's or Flynn's, the result of generations of genetic averaging. Most of them were heavyset. It made Elsa's tall, thin, startlingly pale appearance all the more exotic.

Anna shook her head. She _had_ to stop thinking of Elsa. "What do they do all day?" she said to Flynn.

"What did human do before crowding and agriculture made things like _fertile real estate_ and _resource hoarding_ a thing we even cared about? Nap, mostly. Screw a lot. We have books and movies and socializing with a much wider circle than our hundred-or-so tribe-and-family now. Substitutes."

"Elsa doesn't seem to get a lot of 'free time.'"

"No," Flynn said. "Maybe that's a price to be paid. Rulers don't get a break. Which might explain why it's a kingdom, like Manticore. At least you get to feel important. Unlike old Rob Pierre. 'President' doesn't sound like a job title worth the stress, especially since at the end you go back to being just plain 'citizen.' Provided you don't get shot in the head, like Pierre." He frowned for a moment. "I heard the Queen invited you to dinner."

"Oh." Anna froze for a moment, then waved it away. "That. She wanted to sound me out. Get a feel for how Manticore might approach Arendelle more permanently."

"I see," Flynn said, tapping his chin rhythmically with one hand.

"Although I could tell that she's lonely. It must be really lonely, being Queen and all. Maybe she goes for the handsome scientist type?" Anna eyed Flynn, one eyebrow raised.

"No," Flynn said firmly. "No, no, no, no, no. No thank you at all. My life is simple and uncomplicated. I'm not going to get involved in anything _entailed_, Lady Captain DuVar. No baronesses, no duchesses, no countesses, no princesses."

"But a queen is okay?"

"It didn't rhyme. Or fit the meter."

Anna laughed. "That's a shame. I'm sure you could charm her in no time flat, Flynn Fitzhubert. Just don't wear those cargo pants if you do."

"And be somewhere without my gadgets?" Flynn mimed apall.

"You know, Doctor Fitzhubert, for a boffin you're pretty good company."

"And for a Lady and a Captain, you are as well," Flynn admitted. He raised his coffee cup. "To good company."

"To good company," Anna replied in kind.

They sat quietly for a moment. The cafe was busy with people coming and going, so Anna hadn't noticed the tall, intense man when he'd first entered, but now he was making a beeline for their table. He leaned over said softly, "Captain DuVar?"

Anna looked up, startled. "Yes?"

He reached into his pocket. Anna stiffened until she saw it was just a leather billfold. He showed her an identity card. In a very low voice he said, "Her Majesty requests that you have tea with her this afternoon at 1pm." Anna checked her watch. That was two hours from now, local time. "Would you care to be escorted?"

"No, thank you." The man looked startled. "It's not that far," she said. "I'll walk."

He smiled. "As you wish." In a louder voice he said, "My apologies. I seem to have mistaken you for someone else. Good day, sir. And you, madam." With a much more relaxed look, he turned and left.

"Well, that was certainly odd," Flynn said. "Professionally odd but still, odd."

"Yeah, but-" Anna took a deep breath. "Time for me to go. I'll catch up when we're done."

"I'll be around." He made a broad gesture toward the window. "It's a lovely city."

Anna rose, walked out of the cafe, and made her way toward the waterfront. It didn't seem as if anyone was following her. She'd heard the harrowing tales of how the Admiral had been stalked by one of her enemies, complete with an actual assassination attempt in a crowded restaurant, and now wondered if Elsa's enemies, of which there were more than a few on Arendelle, might try to kill her as an indirect attack on the royal family. The palace officer may have been legitimate, but Anna had no idea what an official palace ID card looked like.

The city seemed safe. Arendelle _felt_ safe. Arendelle would recover from the loss of the Elevator; already, the manufactories in orbit were spinning out the first lengths of cable, no thicker than her thumb, to be stretched from Midpoint outward in both directions, toward the new Anchor and toward the ground. Anna hoped Arendelle stayed safe. It deserved it. Elsa deserved it.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes go at the bottom, ya?<strong> Well, this was a longish one, and I'm not sure how it fits with the rest of the story. Basically, it was more to get Flynn into the picture, because we have plans for the good Doctor Fitzhubert, yes we do.

But also, I kinda want to rag on Weber here; I know he's trying to write Hornblower In Space, but his economics make absolutely no sense, especially not as his series continued. With _that much tech_, the relative impoverishment of most starsystems happens by sheer handwavery, and it annoys me. Arendelle here is a freaking _ice ball_, and without gravitic technology getting into space is goddamned expensive, but once they had reliable orbital lift warming the planet up basically requires a couple hundred square miles of mylar (which is nothing more than freaking _angstroms_ of aluminum printed onto polythelyne), a couple miles of wire (to use the planet's electromagnetic field for alignment and positioning), a very few square meters of solar panel for power, and a computer whose power level is comparable to something built in our 1980s, all of which can be manufactured and/or assembled in orbit.

Also, I think I'm really start to like my vision of Anna here. Kudos for her being a nice, competent person who doesn't have to walk all over people to deserve and wield high authority.


	10. Confession To a Friend

Kai led a short, rounded woman in an elegantly cut dress and a giant smile past Gerda and into the winter sunroom. The day outside hovered barely below freezing and not even a breeze blew, the perfect weather for being outdoors. Hot tea in a self-warming pot sat on the tiny table and warm breads waited on a tray nearby. "Your Majesty, Lady Meke Guiliel."

"Meke," Elsa said, rising to stand before the other woman. "I'm so glad."

"Your Majesty. Are you sure you have time for this?"

"I have to make time. Or so Kai reminds me. And please, don't be so formal."

"I'm sorry, My Queen. I don't feel comfortable calling you 'Elsa.' Not since..." She sighed, but her eyes lighted on Elsa's tiny day-crown.

"You did when we were children."

"That was when we were children. Before you received the throne. And the Keys." Elsa looked down at her gloved hands and nodded. "I sometimes wonder what that was like."

"It was... frightening," Elsa said. "Kai helped me find the gloves, and` there were a few weeks when..." She sighed. "Every generation since Anton the Great has dealt with the Keys. It's the only way to maintain order, Meke. In a situation like this, a democracy would eat itself alive." Elsa gestured toward the chairs. "Come. Sit."

"I'm not so sure. Leto's _The Timeless Way Of Governing_ says we're still small enough that accountability would be possible. But I'm not going to disagree; your family has done Arendelle great service over the years. But you, you look exhausted." Meke said.

"I am." When they were both situated around the table, Gerda poured Meke a cup of tea and withdrew. Elsa's serious look softened as she regarded Meke. Like most of her subjects, Meke was shorter and darker-skinned than Elsa's line and slightly plump. Meke's over-endowed chest preceded her like the prow of an icebreaker. Her dark, straight hair and wide eyes helped accentuate her beauty, and Elsa's eyes spent a little too long lingering over her friend's fortunate figure. "Actually, I asked you here for two reasons. I may be stuck as the Queen of Arendelle, but you've had the freedom to visit many of the districts. You've had time to build up an impression of all of them. I want to talk about... " Her finger tapped the thick folder on her table. The folder was real paper, hand-written in many cases. There would be no inadvertent leakage of her security staff's unguarded opinions. She took a deep breath. Sighing was all the rage these days, she noted.

Gerda raised a hand to her ear, then nodded to Elsa. "Oh, good. Before we get into _that_," she said, tapping the folder again, "I want you to meet someone and assess her for me. Get a feel for her. You've got the best lie-detecting equipment I've ever known between your ears, Meke, and I want you to tell me if I'm dealing with someone trustworthy here."

Meke's eyes furrowed, but she only nodded. Kai re-entered the room. "Your Majesty, as requested, Lady Captain Anna DuVar."

"Here?" Anna said. Kai put his hand to Anna's back and guided her toward the table. "Oh. Um. Hi." Anna seemed to remember herself, bowed. "Your Majesty."

"Captain," Elsa said. "I would like you to meet Lady Meke Guiliel. She's an old friend. I highly recommend you one to another." Meke's eyebrows rose at the coded message. Anna's face was still, but it was clear she hadn't missed the implications either. "Anna, Meke is second in line to inherit the Duchy of Guiliel. Meke, Anna is the Captain of the Royal Manticoran Naval Exploratory Cruiser _Winterkiss_."

Meke's eyes widened. "I... I'm very pleased to meet you, Captain. I understand that Manticore isn't Earth, but... there still is an Earth?"

"Oh, yes, Your Ladyship," Anna said. "I've even been there. I went there on a diplomatic tour as a new lieutenant. We hit all the high spots, you know: London, Paris, New York, Alpha, Olympus and New Clarke."

"New Clarke?"

"It's an orbital station around Jupiter. Refuelling stop. Of course, it's very touristy, because everyone wants to see Jupiter. The glass is thick and there's a layer of water to prevent all the radiation from seeping through. It's much safer to see it through a camera, although once through the glass has its own romance-" She caught herself short. She'd been bouncing.

Elsa smiled. She'd read Commander Buzz's after-action report. Captain Anna DuVar and Lady Anna DuVar seemed to be two utterly different people. Elsa had had a chance to see Captain DuVar, and Commander Buzz's report had reinforced Elsa's impression of a woman of action, toughness, reserve, and a sense of justice. Anna without the white beret was a different creature: flustered, chatty, social, and hedonistic. If both of them had anything in common, it was a deep reserve of commitment toward the people who depended upon her. Elsa could only admire her more.

"You're missing your famous companion."

"Oh, Olaf? He wanted to stay on the ship and hang out with Sven. I want them to come down here and get a good look at your forests, but we don't know what kind of predators you have loose in there, so of course until one of us does the research, he's either with me or upstairs. I like it. It gave me a chance to walk around Chantel without anyone recognizing me. It's a beautiful place, so fairy-tale and everything."

Elsa said, "My ancestor had a soft spot for ancient castles and primary colors. Other cities on Arendelle are much more... modern-looking."

"More's the pity," Meke said. "It's not like we have a good _reason_ for them all to look like steam and steel towers. Captain, you've had a good look at Chantel. Tell me about Manticore."

Anna's eyes narrowed, but she obviously understood the appeal Meke was making. She told. Prost and Favier had met with Kristoff and Anna in the guise of professional soldiers, assessing each other's potential risks and benefits. Elsa's people knew Manticore hopelessly outclassed Arendelle militarily, but they were _good_ professionals who had looked upon the imbalance as an opportunity to learn, not a reason to overreact, run or hide. Meke wanted something different. Elsa watched her best friend extract secrets Anna would never have revealed in a professional sense. Anna talked about growing up in Iron Fjord, visiting places named Copperwall and Jason Bay, about a middle school trip to Landing to visit the Royal Museum of Art and History . Meke was steering Anna around much personal history, although Elsa learned Anna had a mother and a father, they were separated, her father had the title and everything that went with it, and that she had at least one younger sibling.

Meke listened with stillness and attentiveness. Sometimes, when Anna ran down, the silence would seem to stretch out for painfully long moments, and then Meke would ask a question. Anna seemed all too eager to keep the awkward silence from recurring, so she would talk and talk to fill it. Elsa admired the technique, but was sure she could never use it herself. On the other hand, when the silence stretched long, it gave her a chance to watch Anna's face in stillness and concentration, and the flutters in her own belly were impossible to deny.

Meke traded back a few details from her own life. Her parents were still together, her brother Heul was due to inherit their seat, and she had no particular paramours at the moment. The mention of paramours made Anna close up momentarily, but Meke dodged the obstruction with a mention of a childhood pet, a horse. "I love horses!" Anna said, and the room again filled with her voice.

Elsa thought she could listen to Anna for _hours_. Such nattering should have driven her to distraction, but from Anna it was all so different, all so _new_.

After only half an hour, Kai entered and said, "Your Majesty, we have an appointment at two."

"Of course, Kai." She rose, and the two women rose with her. "If you would escort Captain DuVar back to her party?"

"Of course, Your Majesty. Captain?"

Anna rose, as did Elsa. Anna bowed, and Elsa nodded. Anna said, "It was a pleasure to meet you, Lady Guiliel. I hope we meet again."

"Of that, I'm certain," Meke said, holding out a hand. Anna shook, and Kai guided her away. When the door closed, she said, "Well, _that_ was an interesting interview." She was staring at Elsa intently.

"What do you think?" Elsa said as they sat back down.

"I like her. And I think she's telling the truth. I don't have a handle on Manticoran politics yet... hundreds of nobles, of different rank, oh my God, Elsa, it must be very confusing! But I think we're dealing with a fair dealer. She means what she says. Manticore's main power is economic with a military to back it up, not the other way around."

Elsa sagged. "Good. I don't know what we can do economically, but at least I don't have to worry about them coming in as an invading army."

"That doesn't seem their style, no." Meke was still looking Elsa over. She looked at the massive green folder on the table. "What's that, now?"

"Oh, this." Elsa sighed. "It's all the eligible male dukes and their heirs. I was hoping you might have a good idea..."

Meke grimaced. "Elsa-"

"They're pressuring me, Meke."

Meke's eyes went to the door through which Anna and Kai had exited. "Are you sure you didn't want me here to vet Captain DuVar for other reasons?"

Elsa's eyes narrowed. "What are you saying, Meke?"

Meke leaned back in her chair, put her cup down. Her insufferable silence trick stretched much longer than any time she'd spoken with Anna, but both of them knew Elsa had the patience to wait Meke out. Finally she said, "Okay. Elsa, I've known you my whole life. I know for a fact there isn't a man on this planet who attracts your eye. If you want my assessment of the nobility around here, you shouldn't ask your intelligence team to be assessing your dukes and their sons. You should ask them about your duchesses and their daughters."

Elsa felt herself go still, and down inside the flutters were replaced with a chill as deep as Arendelle's coldest night. Most of her "secrets" were publicly known. The Power of the Family of Anton, the Keys, the symbols of her authority real or imagined, were the fodder of the press and the public networks. Her people monitored the public 'net for signs of threat. This... this was never... "You know?"

"Pffft, My Queen. I've known since you were twelve. My only regret is that, well, I don't follow you that way. I would have leaped at the chance. I'm glad I didn't. It must be a terrible affliction, to go from having half the population available to you to having, what, one percent?"

"'Affliction?'" Elsa cried. Then she deflated. "That is one way to look at it. I suppose. But it's not fair, Meke! And how will my dukes react? They've been courting me with favored sons for awhile already. I wish you could accept."

"My Queen, my beloved friend," Meke said, "I would do anything for you. But I can't be _that_ for you. You'll just have to tell them the truth, and have them start sending you their favored daughters instead. I'm afraid that, while you can have your staff go through the list, I don't know of any single Duchesses or Lady who I think would both suit you and would, um, suit you." She glanced back at the door. "Are you sure you're not looking to the good Captain DuVar?"

"What? No, of course not."

"Does she favor women?"

"I don't know. She's dealing with a 'situation'- that's her word- with a man right now, but it seems to be... unstable."

"Maybe because men aren't suitable to her, either?" Meke said.

"I have no idea. Meke," Elsa said, leaning forward fiercely, "It would be inappropriate of me to contemplate a relationship with someone not of Arendelle. It would certainly be inappropriate of me to, to, to glom onto the first woman from outer space that comes into my cham... my throne room."

Meke grinned but didn't say a word.

Elsa deflated. "She is very pretty."

"That she is," Meke said softly. Elsa cocked an eyebrow. "Oh, come off it, Elsa, just because I'm straight doesn't mean I lack in my ability to assess a woman's beauty. In other circumstances, Anna DuVar would count as the competition. Especially with that hair! You two would make an adorable couple."

Elsa laughed behind her hand. "True. Too true. What if I were courting her?"

Meke regarded her seriously. "Elsa, you have to rule Arendelle as best you can. Manticore's population is much greater than Arendelle's, and I'm sure there'll be lots of opportunities for you to find a lover here, or there, or Corona." She shook her head. "I still can't imagine having trade with Corona that isn't measured in years. But if Captain DuVar is available, and a good one... " Meke let it trail off. "There aren't many bargaining chips better than ruler of a whole world."

"I don't want to bribe anyone. I want a relationship based on, on merit."

Meke nodded. "Then don't bribe. I like her. I like Anna. If I were interested in women, I'd be interested in her, too. But I can't advise you in this, Elsa. You're going to have to find out if she's available, and then you're going to have to find your own way."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's notes go at the bottom, Ya?<strong> The slow, agonizing dance proceeds apace as we force Elsa out of her closet and set the ground for a heart-to-heart conversation with that certain red-headed starship captain.

Oh, just to warn you: I'm on time today because I've finally moved forward. I have the next two chapters written already, and, uh... let's just say Chapter 12 is probably going to make a lot of people upset.


	11. Message in a Bottle

"All right, Felix, what's this all about?" Anna asked as she entered Engineering Tool Room #2. To be sure, she'd been grateful for the distraction from the mountains of paperwork that threatened to overwhelm her command, but as long as it could hold atmosphere and the Lords of Admiralty deemed it, _Winterkiss_ was her ship, and her responsibility, and so was the paperwork that went with it. A lot of paperwork.

"Well, Ma'am, it's this." He gestured at a cylinder, not much larger than a full-sized fire extinguisher. Wisps of white vapor fell away from it, signs of cryogenic cooling. "We found it during an inventory of Vesselton and... Well, I don't believe it, but Flynn here thinks that the attack on _Anchor_ wasn't conducted by the Vessel at all. It came _from_ the Vessel, but it originated elsewhere."

"Okay. That's certainly possible. How does this thing fit in?"

Flynn said, "What you're looking at, Captain, is another of those technologies that those of us with gravitics abandoned centuries ago. This is a faster-than-light communications device."

"You mean like our gravitic pulse units."

"Oh, no, this thing is much more impressive than that. It can transmit at rates of megabytes a second. And its range is infinite."

"Infinite?" Anna said. Manticore's gravitic communications devices were slow, low-rate devices with a reach of a few light-hours. "But... How? Why don't we use this?"

"Because we can't," Flynn said. "This is a quantum entanglement device. It's actually fairly easy to create quantities of quantum-entangled particles, separate and store them, and then use one set to disentangle the other, sending a binary signal instantly across any distance. Any distance, Captain. Twelve grams of carbon contains absolutely zetabytes of potential signal. But for it to work, both containers have to stay inside a frame of reference that respects the other." He waved a hand. "When one of our ships uses an impeller drive, we're engaging in something called 'frame dragging', which disassociates our ship with the local frame of reference. A greater frame, one with respect to hyperspace, comes into play, and that's why all the worlds of human space are associated in space and time." He pointed at the container. "For something like this to matter, we would have to drop down to using only slower-than-light technologies. Which is where Arendelle is right now. There's only one reason for this thing to exist. The attack on Queen Elsa was conducted and coordinated from somewhere other than the Vessel."

Buzz inhaled deeply before adding. "Actually, we believe it's more significant than that. We know that Vesselton has been in communication with someone on Corona. A lot of the cyborg crew went there. And the last three ships we sent to Corona, and the last two that came _from_ Corona, contained cargo supplied by and delivered to the Vessel. I'm confident that-" he said, pointing to the cylinder- "was manufactured on Corona and shipped over here."

Anna looked at the cylinder. "Then someone on Vesselton knows why. Someone had to install it. Someone had to maintain it, right?"

Felix said, "I don't know about that, Ma'am. Vesselton was even more automated than we originally thought. For all we know, that was installed according to some coordinated, long-range plans that involved exploiting that automation. Those poor saps in the Vessel's crew may not even have known it was there."

"We have to find out," Anna said. "Buzz might be confident, but I'm not. Can we know for sure?"

"We can," Buzz said. "The stars of Gothel-A and Gothel-B are different, and their radiation can cause small but measurable differences in isotope formation. We may be separated by two light years, but the scientists of both worlds regularly exchange everything they know about their local astronomy, biology, and geology. We have data on isotope formation profiles. A few grams of metal off that cryobottle run through a particle analysis and we would know."

"Do it," Anna said. "Could there be more than one?"

"Easily," Buzz said. "There would have to be a corresponding container jar at the far end for each one, but there could be one hiding anywhere on Agdar. It would be easier to hide one there than somewhere loose in the solar system. There or on the surface of Arendelle."

"Hmm," Anna said unhappily. "Is there any chance we can communicate through it?"

"I'm afraid not, Ma'am," Felix said. "Once we took it on board and put up the wedge..." He looked miserably apologetic. "I'm sorry, Ma'am. We didn't know what it was."

"It's not your fault, Felix. How would any of us recognize this for what it is, or was? My commendations to all of you for your fine work. But test it. Tell me where it came from. And I'll talk to Calhoun about the Vessel's crew? Passengers? Residents? What do we even call them?" She sighed. "We'll find out what they knew."

"Yes, Ma'am." Felix said.

Anna left the engineering room now more perplexed than before. _Vesselton_ had seemed like a perfect foil for their problems, and now it seemed that the real enemy was further away. She had no intention of going to Corona anytime soon. Once her ship was fixed, they were heading back to Thorin, as the locals called the brown dwarf, and waiting for the relief ship from Lynx. This was a problem for Arendelle to solve, when Arendelle had the hyperspace resources necessary to get to Corona and pursue the matter.

She reached her cabin, sat back down at her desk and regarded the queue of reports and requisitions. She sighed. She loved being a starship captain. It validated her own self-image, she was not just a pretty bauble to be had by some noble son, she was someone Her Majesty had entrusted as mistress before God, with the moral authority to risk the lives of others to ensure the integrity and honor of her Queen and Country. It still came with paperwork. She picked up a stylus and leaned forward.

The communications buzzer went off. Not the emergency buzzer, either. She scowled at the unseeing camera. She had work to do, darnit. She pressed the button. "Yes, Lieutenant?"

"Communication for you, Captain. It's Queen Elsa."

"Oh!" Anna said, quickly checking to make sure her uniform didn't look a complete shambles. "Put her through."

That beautiful, pale face even more magnified than usual came on the camera and screen. Anna felt her heart beat faster. "Your Majesty, this is a pleasant surprise. What can I do for you?"

"Captain DuVar, I have received a bit of news that, I'm sure, you'll be receiving soon, but it's important enough that I wanted to deliver it myself. Doctor Thatch and Engineer Fiksit agree that we have both the materials and the capability to manufacture a new hyperspace coil for your ship, and it'll only take two weeks."

"Really?" Anna said, stunned. Coils were finicky things, although Manticore did seem to build them in bulk. "That's amazing." And while it may have been amazing, it didn't justify the queen of an entire world calling her. Felix or Doctor Thatch could have delivered the news.

Anna paused. The economic ramifications of what Elsa had just told her started seeping past her elation. Arendelle would soon be manufacturing hyperdrives, and their prototypes would be rolling off the assembly line in weeks. Not years, not even months, _weeks_. She shook her head. Alpha and beta nodes were public domain technologies. If Arendelle could manufacture them, it should. "Thank you, your Majesty. I think I understand."

"I thought you would. But that isn't the only reason I chose to call you. Captain, when your ship first arrived I told you I wished to make a public announcement from the _Anchor_ regarding your arrival. It was important that everyone see just how significant contact with Manticore- and with Earth- really is. The very idea that I could get to _Anchor_ in less than a day would be a sign of that significance. The attack took that away from me." Elsa shrugged in that wing-like gesture Anna had seen before. "The official period of mourning for those killed in the attack ends next Monday. While we bury our dead, we have you and your ship to thank for keeping the damage to a minimum."

Anna swallowed. Only a narrow belt at Arendelle's equator was warm enough to grow food year-round; that same narrow belt was the only smart place to put the space elevator. The crash of the elevator's base had destroyed almost a fifth of Arendelle's agricultural output. Anna had saved the space-based resources, but over two thousand farmers and maintenance people working within and around agrobelt had been killed or injured. Clean-up was still ongoing.

But she had saved the solettas, so the individual duchies of Arendelle were still warm enough to be comfortable and human-habitable. If she hadn't saved those, the death toll could have been much, much higher.

Elsa continued, "At the end of that mourning period I would like to host a dinner and reception for you and, at your discretion, select members of your crew. While it would be a much more somber occasion than I'd originally hoped, please say you will come, please, do bring Olaf with you."

"Of course, your Majesty. I'll have to leave Kristoff behind again. Someone has to take care of my ship. But I'll be there. May I bring a civilian as well? Doctor Flynn has been very helpful."

Elsa smiled. Why did her smiles never seem completely happy? She always had a pall of sadness around her eyes. "Of course! Commander Buzz has had nothing but good to say of him and all of your engineering staff."

Anna nodded and said, "Of course I agree! Please have your secretary contact my steward with details. I can't wait to finally meet everyone."

"I will. And Anna? Thank you."

"You're welcome." The screen went dark. Anna reached out and stroked it gently with her fingertips. "She called me 'Anna.' What did she mean by that?"

Olaf, who'd spent the entire conversation draped over his fuzzy perch, cocked his head and bleeked at her. "No, Olaf, I don't think I do." He murred at her. "That's crazy. Just because I have hormones doesn't mean she does. I mean, sure, she has hormones, she's only human, everyone has hormones. But not like that. Not like girl hormones or whatever they are. I'm so bad with metaphor. You know what I mean." He tilted his head. "God, I'm talking to you like Kristoff talks to Sven." She tossed her stylus into the cup on her desk. It spun and rattled. "I don't have enough brain cells left for this. I'm going to sleep." She got up and walked over to him, leaning over until they butted heads gently. "Coming?"

Olaf stretched himself upwards, then clambered onto the offered shoulder. She scratched at his chin as she carried him off to bed.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's notes go at the bottom, ya?<strong> So, next chapter we get Anna and Elsa into the same room again, which is always hard to do when both are competent, dedicated people with their own responsibilities and no prior relationship to drive them together. Writing romances is sometimes like that: the characters know what they have to do, but what they _want_ keeps encouraging them, sometimes subconsciously, to try and get close to the other.

**Warning:** Next week is Chapter 12, which means if you've been reading this since the beginning, you've stuck with me for three months now! Thank you! But I've been dreading Chapter 12 for a while, because I have no idea how you're going to receive it. Seriously; if you can't stand to see one of our major characters harmed, you probably shouldn't read further.


	12. Frozen Over

Elsa had told her it would be a dinner. She hadn't said how large. Over a hundred people in elegant, fancy dress were served in the enormous room where Elsa had first invited Anna to dinner just a few weeks ago. The lighting was turned up, beautiful banners suggesting the four seasons, each with both a sun and a soletta at the top shining down onto the land,, hung along the four walls. There were nine tables, each seating twelve. Anna and Olaf had privileged seats at Elsa's right hand, and at her left sat Lady Meke Guiliel again. Flynn had also been given a place of privilege at Elsa's table, along with Captain Buzz. The other six spots were occupied by noble "Friends of the Crown," Anna noted carefully, mostly older gentlemen with a decidedly academic air. She and Flynn were now Friends of the Crown; the term obviously meant something.

Elsa had given a short introductory speech, welcoming Manticore and _Winterkiss_ specifically, and discussing the "recent and tragic attempts by others to use this joyous occasion as reason to overturn centuries of peace and justice." There were rounds of hearty "Here here!" from the assembled guests.

Dinner consisted of some of the finest roast pork Anna had ever tasted. There were hints of port and clove in the marinade, rosemary and caramel in the rind. Anna loved to cook, and lived with the regret that she had so little time to indulge, but she truly appreciated the art in others. She looked up to see Meke's eyes on something over her shoulder. The woman leaned over and whispered something in Elsa's ear, and Elsa quickly looked in the same direction then looked away. "Is something the matter, your highness?" she asked.

"Only politically," Elsa said. She gestured with her head. "That's Hans Meinard's father, the duke. He wanted me to give his son the privilege of that chair for weeks now." She pointed toward Anna. "Tonight would have been one of those opportunities, but I much prefer that you be here, Captain."

"Thanks. I think."

Elsa laughed. "Meke and I have been discussing the matter of my... suitors." Meke suddenly looked up. The grin on her face was radiant, like that of a treecat with a celery patch. "We are coming up with a strategy. It shouldn't be your concern, Captain."

"No, probably not," Anna said. Should she be worried about this Meinard guy? It was obvious Elsa wasn't interested in him. Some Duke's son. She frowned. An Arendelle duchy was about the same size an a Manticore earldom, and Anna knew a lot of earl's sons who thought they were God's gift to anyone and everyone who crossed their paths. That thought connected directly to Hans, and she tried not to let it linger on him too long. She looked up at Elsa. "I'm sorry if it's a bother."

"It's not _your_ bother," Elsa said.

"Still..." Anna said.

"Anna," Elsa said, and her hand seemed to reach toward Anna's, hestitated, then fell back. "I appreciate your warrior spirit, but this is a political issue, and an internal matter. For now."

"I understand, your highness." She looked up to see Meke's smile broaden until it looked almost painful.

One of the older men at that table said, "So, are we to understand that the gravity drive designs you've provided us are free for us to use?"

"Of course," Anna said, grateful for the distraction. Her hormones did not need this kind of abuse. Fifty-to-one odds Elsa was straight. Right? "It's an old technology by this time. Everyone uses it, and while there are always improvements that some design shops might want to keep secret for a while, the basic design has been around for hundreds of years."

"So, if we figure out how to make them, we could be crossing the Arendelle starsystem in a matter of days, not months?"

"Yes," Anna said. That Arendelle was already manufacturing hypercores was apparently not yet public information.

"And faster than light travel?"

"The same. Oh, you'll need a fast primer on the hazardous of interstellar travel, things like hyper limits and grav sheer and how to detect it, but I'm sure Manticore would be willing to provide the requisite technical expertise. We'd have to figure out an exchange rate, or how to trade Arendelle's krones with Manticoran dollars, but that's something for bankers and traders." Anna could have burbled on. "In fact, that's one of the things that Doctor Fitzhubert and I were discussing. We don't know much about your relationship with Corona, but you might be able to rent some large freighters and arrange for Corona to supply your food needs for the next few years, until your farms are back on-line. The geography of Corona has many more fertile zones than Arendelle, and is way underutilized. If you could tool up their farms, you could stave off even the small reduction in food resource."

"I see..." He drummed his fingers on the table, but seemed to have run out of questions.

Dessert was served, an exquisite little custard crusted on top with melted sugar glass and a mint leaf. Anna left none on her plate. "I'm going to regret that later," she mumbled to Olaf. He responded by pressing his nose against her arm briefly.

"Is it true he can talk?" asked one of the others.

Anna understood "Not with his mouth. We have a sign language. But we rarely need it."

"But he's a member of your crew?"

"Officially, yes," Anna said. "A member of the medical crew."

"Fascinating." Anna nodded, looking up. She locked eyes with Elsa. For a moment, each was unwilling to be the first to look away. They settled on turning away simultaneously. Anna swallowed.

It reminded Anna of the flight up to _Winterkiss_, that fateful day. Every time she looked up, Elsa was looking at her. Anna had entertained the fantasy that Elsa might be queer, might be interested in her, but those had just been fantasies. But at that first dinner, there had been more than just a casual exchange of pleasantries and a trade of information. She had been aware of Elsa's loneliness. She had wanted to share her own.

Anna glanced over at Meke, Elsa's strategist in finding a suitable partner, it seemed. When Anna caught Meke looking at her, it was some sort of intense examination. She would smile at Anna a little too broadly. Anna turned to Olaf. "Are you doing that?"

He gave her his best enigmatic grin. Anna went back to doing what she had been doing for two weeks: trying to ignore the curiosity lurking in the back of her head. Trying, and failing.

Dinner ended. Elsa rose, as did everyone else. "Forgive me," she murmured to the table. "I have to attend to a small detail. I'll meet you all in the reception area shortly."

The rest began a casual shuffle toward the broad, twin doors leading to the reception ballroom. Olaf took her place on Anna's shoulder. Anna moved with the crowd toward the larger ballroom. Before she passed the doors someone tapped her on the arm. She turned. "Oh! Gerda, right?"

"Yes, Miss. Could you come this way?"

Anna looked at her, puzzled. "Sure," she said.

Gerda led her out of the crowd toward a small door. Inside was a side sitting room with a small, elegant yellow couch flanked by tiny tables suitable to tea and biscuits. Gerda closed the door, leaving Anna alone.

She turned as a section of wall slid open, revealing a passageway. "Elsa... Queen." Anna's heart beat louder against her chest. She was alone with Elsa. Well, not alone. She was sure that somewhere nearby Captain Calhoun or one of her trusted subordinates was ensuring Elsa's safety. She bowed. Olaf bleeked in amusement.

The beautiful woman in blue laughed. "'Elsa' is fine in here, Anna," she gesturing to the room with that tiny shrug of hers. She peered at Olaf momentarily. "Tell me, with claws like those why doesn't he destroy your clothes?"

Anna brushed some loose fur off one shoulder. "One of the privileges of military life. I can order all of my jackets with reinforced armor-weave. Most people who've been adopted by a treecat get the shoulders done, but he likes to crawl all over me like a squirrel, so my entire jacket is armored."

"I see. Thank you for coming. Don't worry, there's no crisis."

"I wondered about that," Anna said.

"I asked Gerda to bring you here because, before the full reception starts- I can't really call them 'festivities,' although I can name a duke or two who would- I wanted to thank you personally for your role in saving my world. I haven't said it enough. I don't know that I can."

Anna said, "Your Majesty, I was only doing my job."

Elsa took a deep breath, let it out. "That's what Captain Calhoun says, too." She turned to the couch. "Please, take a seat. We have a few minutes." Anna looked at the couch dubiously, then toward Elsa, then sat. Olaf climbed off her shoulder onto the back of the couch. Anna registered his purring as gently pleased. "Anna, I also called you here because I believe I owe you an apology."

Anna was surprised, and a little worried. She was unable to imagine what Elsa might have done, or not done, that necessitated an apology. Elsa put one hand down on the couch to shift herself, turning her body toward Anna's. "Everyone here in the kingdom knows me in some way. My servants have known me since I was a child. The guards' role is set in their oath, their loyalty to the royal family, and they would give their lives to protect me. My subjects are my subjects. My nobles are my nobles, and while they mean well, they've also been a constant in my life since I was born. You're the only person in Arendelle right now for whom _the rules_ don't exist."

"I have a queen!" Anna said quickly.

"Yes, but I am not she." Anna giggled. "What?" Elsa said.

"Of course, a queen would always pick the right tense. No, that's not right. What is that called, when you have to choose... You know, of course a queen's English would be perfect."

Elsa's eyes narrowed, but then she hid her smile behind her hand again. "Declension. I suppose that's true. What I mean, Anna, is that I invited you down here the first time, and asked for this privacy this time too, because I, because I don't have, because... "

Anna took a deep inward breath, filling her lungs with the way understanding filled her heart. She reached out and hovered her hand over Elsa's on the couch. "Elsa? May I?"

Elsa looked at Anna's hand, and nodded. Anna reached down and closed her fingers around Elsa's gloved hand hand. The touch was electric. Through the thin material Elsa's hand was cool but alive, the muscles twitching like a small, frightened animal against Anna's palm. Elsa's entire body jumped a little bit, and Anna held on tighter, and as they looked at one another an emotion neither of them was willing to yet name surrounded them. Elsa finally nodded toward their mutual grip, and smiled. "Did you ask because I'm a queen?"

"No," Anna said. "It's a kind of training we get. Some of us. I asked because, it's the right thing to do before you touch someone like that."

"Oh." Elsa grinned. "Really? That must make courting complicated."

"When you're courting, it can. But it also makes everything more explicit. Honest. You learn to ask, to respect the other person's body and space. It doesn't have to be with words, but it does have to be clear. I mean... sorry, I'm rambling."

"You have to ask every time?" Elsa said.

"At first. Eventually, you get comfortable with one another, and you build up a lot of trust, and then you reach a place where you can agree, but it has to be explict, you have to talk about it, you have to say it out loud, that instead of asking for each other's 'yes', you believe the other person's intentions are good, you agree instead to hear and honor each other's 'no.'"

"I see," said Elsa. "You said some get this training, but not everyone? Who gets this training?"

Anna hesitated before answering. She had been dreading this moment. But she also had wanted to tell Elsa how she felt. "People who aren't heterosexual. It's because we have to work harder not to be misunderstood. We've learned to teach it to each other."

Elsa jerked her eyes back down to their hands, and then to Anna, and now it was her turn for understanding to fall into place, and her eyes went very wide and her voice went very soft. "Oh," she said.

They were both silent, staring at each other. Anna felt something inside her pushing her toward Elsa, and was sure the other woman felt the same, but she didn't want to start it, she didn't want it to be her responsibility if she was wrong, or if she was right, and she knew, she _knew_, that Elsa was dealing with the exact same thoughts in her head.

Anna said, "We should head back out. They're probably wondering-" A loud popping sound, like a large vacuum light bursting in the far distance, caught their attention and shattered the moment. Olaf suddenly reared up from his drape along the couch, snarling. More pops, louder, more booming, more powerful, came closer, and then one exploded overhead. Plaster from the ceiling showered the room. "We have to get out of here," Anna said, leaping up and shoving open the door leading back to the ballroom. "Where's your security?"

"I don't know!"

Through the doorway leading to the reception area Anna heard gunshots and screams. "Get back," she hissed. "We might be safer in here." She held the door open just enough to peek through, ready to slam it closed if necessary, but watched the dining area and hoped that, whatever was happening, Calhoun's men would close it down.

The hidden door opened again and three men in Palace security livery came through it. Anna relaxed, but then one drew up a gun. "The Eight Day Queen!" he yelled even as his voice was drowned out by the ripping warcry of an enraged treecat. Olaf leapt off the couch and hit the front man with his full eight kilograms. The man screamed as he went down, blood streaking from where his eyes had been. Olaf leapt to a second man. The third had time to recover and and rasied his weapon. "OUT!" Anna shouted, shoving Elsa through the door into the dining room.

Olaf's impact on the gunman sent his aim wide and bullets spalled plaster off the ceiling. Anna hurled herself out of the doorway as three more men in security livery came through a serving door. She didn't need Olaf's empathy to see the murder in their eyes, and threw herself into the midst of them. "Elsa, run!"

One man pulled out something that looked like a fat pen and threw it. Anna more felt than heard what happened next as it went off- and every bulb in that beautiful chandelier suddenly exploded at once. The chandelier came crashing down, shattering glass everywhere in the dining room, a crystalline bomb almost musical in its destruction.

Anna barely had time to recover. She was no marine trained in hand-to-hand combat. She had only ever had basic training, but it would have to do. She was a Sphinxian, at least half again as strong as a Terran of her size and build, and she hoped her attackers mistook her for the small woman she appeared to be. She hurled herself upward at the lead man, getting inside his gun arm and smashing the palm of her hand into his chin. Their momentum carried them into the second man, who tripped and fell.

More men came through the door. Olaf was among them, a buzzsaw of claws and teeth and rage, and now men who seemed to be part of the palace's real security detail joined the fray.

The man she struck grunted and turned, trying to point the gun at her, at Elsa, at any meaningful target at all. The gun roared, and Anna hoped it hadn't hit anything. Desperate, she kneed him in the crotch. He went down with a scream. Anna kicked another crushing blow to his face with the heel of her boot. The gun in his hand went off.

Anna heard a scream behind her. "Elsa!" She turned.

Elsa was holding her arm, her eyes wide with panic, but she was also running toward Anna. "Watch out!"

Anna heard a gunshot behind her, loud and very close, and the world contracted, thudded with an enormous final heartbeat. Pain, the coldest pain Anna had ever felt, flared in her chest as she looked up. Elsa's pale face, her magnificent turquoise blouse, were suddenly spattered with bright red, a gory swirl of crimson so wrong against her bright, beautiful blue cloth and pale skin. Blood. Who's blood?

_Oh_, Anna thought. _My blood. Mine. No!_ She touched her chest, felt the huge, wet, ragged hole at the center of it. She looked up into beautiful, blue, horrified eyes. "Elsa..." she tried to say, but her lungs no longer held air. Distantly she heard Olaf's own terrified scream, heard the frenzy building, heard more voices, more footsteps, heard the man behind her shriek in agony.

Elsa grabbed her, wrapped her arms around her. "It's okay, Anna. I've got you." Anna began to slip from Elsa's grip and sink toward the ground. _No!_, Anna thought. _No, not now. I've haven't said 'I love you' yet. Not to anyone. Not to Olaf. Not to..._ Anna fell down a deep, deep, deep, deep hole, and the only light she saw came from the shining, glistening tears in Elsa's eyes above her.

_Hold me._


End file.
